The Classics

At the risk of sounding like a complete, uneducated tool I have a confession to make:

I am not a fan of reading the classics. I'm sure they are amazing and wonderful and I truly do love the screenplay adaptations of most of them but when it comes to reading them I just...can't. I zone out. I read the same passages about 17 times and still have no idea what the actual meaning is. Maybe I'm over-thinking it (that comes naturally to me) or maybe my brain is dumb when it comes to classic literature.

When I watch "Pride & Prejudice," however, I sob every single time...especially the Kiera Knightley version. I don't know what it is about that version but it just makes me feel all the feelings. Since I have nothing better to do (I still have a month until I move so I'm on hiatus from packing the remaining few boxes) I am working my way through the classics starring Kiera Knightley. I think she's a solid "classics" actor. Then again, I also love "Love, Actually," so I may not be the BEST judge here.

While the screen adaptations are obviously nowhere near the masterpieces that the literary works (probably) are...they are my limit. Maybe someday I'll be more of a grownup and able to digest them. This quarantine is not the time.

If anything, right now I need less thinking and more mindless activity. Honestly, I don't even know if I want that either...I don't know what I want or need right now. I simply know this whole social distancing is utter crap.

Okay, it's not utter crap. I get the premise and I understand why it's important but the isolation is super...well, isolating. I consider myself to be a fairly strong person on a good day (or at least I play the part pretty well) and it's making me into a hot mess.

It's not a far reach. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This weekend I'm working on getting some stuff together for my kids who are still testing. I'm 1/8 of the way done so that's not the greatest but I'm hoping to be at least halfway done by Monday morning. We'll see. It's really hard to get in a groove with this idea I had but I'll get there eventually. Besides, it's not really about me.

Not only do kids across the world have to continue their educations but they have to do it in a way that many of them are not ready for, no matter how many crash courses or tips we throw their way. The same can be said for college students who are having to transition from classes on campus to staying at home. I struggle with that at 38; I can't imagine having to restructure my entire life as a 5-25-year-old.

Grace and leniency have been two recurring themes in almost every adult conversation I've had over the last couple of weeks but it extends well past kids and young adults. We all need to have a little extra grace and leniency for each other, for ourselves, for the strangers who are making utterly asinine choices. We don't know why they do what they do.

I'm just as guilty as the next person of being judgmental but, you know what? I'm going to try to be less so.

It's like when you see a man buying flowers and someone says, "Oh, man, what did you do?" automatically assuming the guy is in the doghouse with his significant other. That really pisses me off. Who the hell are we to judge others when we truly have no idea what's going on in their lives?

Grace and leniency.  Things are weird right now. They're difficult and excruciating and overwhelming and desperately lonely at times. I miss my own boys so much and I can't wait for us to be able to be together again, to argue over movies or what to make for dinner or whose turn it is to get up and get ice cream or who gets to pick the game we play. Things really suck. But they will get better. They have to get better.

And when they do I have 176 kids at school to squeeze the hell out of while I tell them I love them and it's only weird if they make it weird.

But it won't be weird...not for me and probably not for them, either. It'll be right and a long time coming and the happiest reunion EVER.

Or it'll be weird...but I really don't think so.

Aubs