February 2nd: Heather Lanier
Groundhog Day. The day Bill Murray iconically lived over and over until he found the meaning of life. Perhaps the same will happen to me. Unlike Bill, though, I don’t wake up to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” I wake to sounds deliberately chosen to keep me sleeping. They’re ambient waves of white noise. Because it’s hard to sleep these days. It’s hard to stay asleep as a middle-aged woman (is that me now? How is that me?) and it’s hard to stay asleep two weeks into the 47th presidential term. Executive Orders—EO’s—are now the new poison we keep drinking to stay informed. The alternative is ignorance. We reject the alternative. But EO’s make it hard to sleep. They arrive at all hours. Since two weeks ago, all my usual screen limits have been thrown out the skylight.
The skylight is above our bed. Its faint blue light tells me that early morning has come. But it’s Sunday. I can sleep, sleep, sleep. So long as the kids aren’t in crisis, I can stay in bed. I roll over. My husband’s side is empty. He’s off to work.
Yesterday morning was Saturday, the other sleep-in day, but I couldn’t sleep. Earlier this week, a military helicopter crashed into a plane, and less than twenty-four hours later, the president blamed people with “severe intellectual disabilities.” My oldest daughter has “moderate to severe intellectual disabilities.” She cannot dress herself. No one like her is anywhere near an air traffic control tower. People like her are fighting to be seen as worthy and valuable in their schools and communities. The leader of the free world doesn’t give a fuck.
I pull a hat over my eyes to block the skylight. Sleep, sleep, sleep, I tell myself. I fall into dreams I can’t remember. “Snuggle me,” I hear from the bedside. It’s my oldest daughter. I tell her to get in on her dad’s side. I pull off my hat and arrange the covers for her. I put my hat back on and fall back to sleep.
“Are you sleeping?” she asks. Minutes later? Hours later? “Are you sleeping?” she asks again.
“I’m sleeping,” I say.
“I stayed in my bed,” she says. She’s thirteen. Staying in her bed is a triumph for her. Which is why she gets a prize.
“You did. You can have screentime.”
“I can?!” she squeals. “Goodbye!” I feel the weight of her body leave the bed. “See you later!” she says at the doorway, and I hear her feet tap down the steps. She’s headed for her iPad. I sleep and sleep.
I sleep until I can’t anymore. The digital clock reads 9:00.
I hear fast, confident feet run down the steps. My youngest, 11 years old. Two minutes later, I hear the toaster ding. She’s heating up her waffles. “Wait,” she sings. “They don’t love you like I love you.”
I try to move. My body is the kind of heavy that comes from living in fight or flight mode for a few weeks, and then crashing. For nearly as long as the EO’s have poured down, I’ve been fighting my oldest daughter’s school district. It’s not just presidents who threaten her. It’s administrators with bottom lines on budgets. But Friday night, we got a promising email. Which is why I can finally sleep this morning.
I head downstairs to assess the kids. What’s their collective energy? Can I motivate both my children and me to get into Center City in one hour? Can we head to mass in Philly?
The 11-year-old is hunched over waffles and says she could go either way. The oldest enthusiastically wants to go. She asks where we are going after breakfast. I tell her I don’t know. She asks where we are going after breakfast. I tell her I don’t know, and I need a shower. She asks where we are going after my shower. I tell her she has to be okay with not knowing right now. She will repeat the question, “What are we doing, what are we doing?” until I figure it out. So I try to decide quickly. I soak a bowl of oats and nuts, check the clock, 9:30, and decide we can get to mass. Probably.
In the shower, I listen to Tracey Gee read her new book, The Magic of Knowing What You Want. Gee describes her evangelical upbringing. Women’s desires were seen as frivolous and untrustworthy. Men’s desires were seen as prophetic. I left the Baptist church when I was seven, so I don’t know how much that shit entered my bloodstream, but I appreciate Gee’s feminist-spiritual reframing of desire. The book invites readers to get familiar with what they want. What if what you want wants you back? Gee asks.
Standing in front of my closet, I ask myself, what do I want to wear? And what I want to wear are lavender jeans, a black silk blouse with white butterflies, a beige chunky cardigan I got at the thrift store, and green ballet flats.
When I come downstairs from my shower, the 11-year-old is staring at the TV. She’s watching the men of Punxsutawney stand on a stage with black top hats and black coats.
They are all middle aged and white. They live in the middle of Pennsylvania. Based on those facts alone, odds are good they voted for the man who blames people like my daughter for a military helicopter crashing into a commercial airplane. Everything is tainted. Everything feels threatening. One of the men holds the groundhog above a circular platform. The groundhog cowers into a ball.
“Aww, poor Phil,” says my 11-year-old.
“Why are there no women on stage?” I ask.
The 13-year-old holds her iPad up to my face. “Cheese,” she says. I hear the snap of the camera app.
The dozen or so men in top hats and black coats hover over the groundhog, who now squats on the platform. One of the men nods. There’s a decision. Someone pulls out a scroll, and reads from it at the microphone. “The prognosticator of prognosticators!” he says, hailing the brown creature. The groundhog has spoken. Six more weeks of winter.
“Noooo!” says the 11-year-old.
“How do they know he saw what they saw?” I ask.
I sit down to eat the oats that I’ve soaked. The 11-year-old comes into the kitchen to tell me why Groundhog Day is a silly holiday.
“Well,” I say, “You’re about to head to the OG Groundhog Day. It’s Candlemas.”
I’m married to an Episcopal priest, so I’ve learned that every secular holiday has a corresponding Christian feast day. I don’t know how to explain the connection between Groundhog Day and Candlemas to my kid, but later I’ll look it up. How did Candlemas, a day blessing candles and lighting them and praying for light, evolve into yanking a groundhog from its burrow and seeing if the large rodent casts a shadow? Here’s Merriam Webster: “In both events, light is significant: it creates shadows and guidance.”
The next thirty minutes are a scramble. I dress my thirteen-year-old and myself. Get us both cleaned up. Do our hair. Put on her socks and orthotics and shoes. She looks fierce in a cheetah-print skirt and jeggings and a black long-sleeved T and black sneaks, but we’re super late.
In the car headed to Philly, the radio starts with Elliott Smith’s “Angeles.” I gasp and sing along and feel myself transported to the late nineties. Other tunes we hear: an unknown Rihanna song, “Dance Monkey,” and Toto’s “Africa.” We merge easily onto the Vine Street Expressway because, miraculously, all the lights are green. On the Ben Franklin Parkway, we spot fit joggers, each running solo. Most are men. I like to run, but as the spouse to a priest, leisure Sunday running won’t be for me. If we turn left, we’d reach the famous Rocky Balboa steps. We turn right.
We’re only seven minutes late when we park the car. I’m a water-bottle manager, assessing who has theirs. We step into the church. The voice of the priest is the man I’ve slept beside for almost twenty-five years. My husband is chanting at the altar. He doesn’t sound like he has a cold, which is good.
The ceiling is several stories high and made to look like the hull of a ship. Because, in a sense, we are traveling. A liturgy is a journey. The first time I heard the twelve-person choir, I immediately wept, because it is so freaking gorgeous.
“Why is it called Candlemas?” my youngest asks in a whisper. The sopranos and altos lift up and down to make an absurdly, stunningly beautiful harmony.
“Because I think there are candles,” I whisper back.
The choir and altar party and priest all process in a slow-moving line down the church aisles. When they pass us, a billow of incense smoke wafts into our pew. The folks holding candles and the crucifix and the thurible (incense holder on a chain-link swing) form a tight configuration. They head solemnly and in lockstep toward the altar. They wear white robes. Most of them today are queer. Two weeks ago, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of DC implored the 47th president to have mercy on immigrants, on LGBTQ folks, on people who are threatened by the administration’s proposed new policies. Split screens showed his reaction. The bishop received death threats after. If Jesus came to us today, he would be crucified. People seem to prefer a groundhog. That’s something they can dangle above the earth and control.
Fifteen minutes into the liturgy, a few parishioners are heading to the altar. They return with thin white sticks in their hands. It’s time for candles. My kids and I head up too. Back in our pews, the youngest says we shouldn’t light her sister’s. Yesterday, at the library, her sister kept dropping things. Her coat. A tote bag. My phone. Every few minutes, we had to retrace our steps through the library and find another thing missing.
“I’ll help her hold it,” I said. Everyone deserves a lit candle.
In the front pews, we see a few candles lit. People turn to light each other’s candles with theirs. A guy two pews ahead of us turns around, reaches his flaming wick toward my unlit wick, lights my candle. I light the wick of my youngest. I light the wick of my oldest. I hold my candle in my right hand and her thin hand in my left hand, careful to keep it upright.
My mind plans what will happen if we somehow drop her candle. It would land on the empty wood pew in front of us. I would grab her fake fur coat from Target and beat out the flames.
Yesterday, we learned that all the LA fires were finally 100% contained. I wish all the other national fires were 100% contained. That’s the difference between a candle and a fire. One is contained, one is chaos. One flame is illumination; the other is destruction.
My youngest touches her flame to mine, watches them become one. It’s like the flames are kissing. She pulls them apart, and the two flames shrink. She brings hers to mine, and they become one flame double in height.
“This is my favorite mass,” she says.
We pray for the light to scatter the darkness. We pray for our eyes to be enlightened. We ask for the light without us to shine within us.
I pray for private concerns. I make confessions for the ways it suddenly dawns on me that I fucked up this week. We take communion. We sing “The Angelus,” my favorite part of the mass, and I never realized until now that it shares the same name as the beloved Elliott Smith song. Was Smith singing about angels? Why is it called “Angeles”? I’ll look it up later.
The youngest visits the cat in the back office, and my oldest and I head upstairs for coffee hour. I eat a roast beef and horseradish sandwich on a mini brioche bun. I eat a roasted red pepper and pesto panini. I sit catty corner to a woman who loves Philadelphia sports. Am I ready for the Superbowl? She is! I talk to an elderly yoga student who says she needs at least 90 minutes to warm up. She says her first yoga classes were held in secret because people accused them of being in a cult. I carry two plates of food for the disabled elder who wears flashy satin brocade jackets.
The youngest and I drive home. The oldest stays at church with her dad. I tell the youngest that when we get home, we’re just going to chill. But then I see the mounds of laundry. Spending my spare hours writing to school officials and advocates all week has meant that I’m still playing catch up. Laundry is my task. Groceries and cooking are my husband’s. I have the easier job. I throw in a load, and then the youngest and I watch Project Runway. The designers have to make an editorial outfit for supermodel Coco Rocha, who is crane-like and everyone says cannot take a bad picture.
I get on the Internet to grade some student work and make plans for the week. Instead, I learn that Elon Musk has access to every American’s social security number. “It’s a coup,” write several historians. “Write your senators!”
I write my senators. I write my congressman. I have made my voice heard, or I have dropped my voice into a black box.
My senator releases a statement on social media. The statement says what’s happening with Elon Musk is very bad. My senator doesn’t say yet what he’ll do. My face feels flush. Mildly aflame. Another fire.
My oldest and my husband return from church. The sun is about to set. My husband has to call back a parishioner who wants advice. He’s usually the cook, and I determine that he needs a break, so I order Chinese takeout.
The youngest loves the steamed dumplings. My husband digs the lo mein. I don’t even know what I love. I didn’t even know what I wanted. I just wanted nobody to have to cook tonight. I’m just grateful for food. The mu shoo pork is so salty that it makes the lo mein taste bland, until I take a break from the mu shoo pork, pick at the other entrees, and then return to the lo mein. I see why my husband likes it. The lo mein is amazing.
It's 8pm. I step into the home office so I can prepare my work-week. I read an essay by a student, email some notes to her, make a list of things I need to do this week, respond to a university who’s hosting me for a talk on disability, review old talks I’ve given, and make a quick plan for this next one.
Meanwhile, I can hear the Grammys playing in the living room. “Yes!” shouts the youngest. “That’s MY GIRL!” Sabrina Carpenter has won something.
I work past my kid’s bedtime. My husband puts them to sleep. Once upstairs, I have a hard time putting down my phone. I can’t seem to stop myself from reading the alarms from various otherwise not-alarmed people. I put the sleep app on. The white noise sound waves begin. If I were Bill Murray, I’d wake tomorrow to “I Got You Babe.” I’d do the whole day over. Hold the candles. Pray for a light to shine on the world.
Heather Lanier is the author of the poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing, and the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. She works as an Assistant Professor of creative writing at Rowan University. Her free Substack, The Slow Take, invites readers to lean into what makes them feel more human.