Post-Pandemic Activities Where Dressing like a Giant Toddler Who Still Takes an Afternoon Nap Will Still Be Socially Acceptable

As we emerge from our temporary sweatpants society, the following activities will still command a dress code of Giant Toddler Who Should Not Miss the Afternoon Nap:

Recreation
Attending a Cuddle Party

Cosplaying at ComicCon

Participating in a potato sack race

Being a contestant on “Double Dare”

Going as Maggie Simpson to a Halloween Party

Attending a Silver Sneakers chair yoga class

Doing the walk of shame at 7 a.m. from a fraternity party

Embracing Furry culture

Professional

Managing a Croc Store

Performing in a Beastie Boys cover band

Riding on the “Bananas in Pajamas Live!” Tour Bus 

Shooting an ad for the SnuggieTM

Tinkering in the NASCAR Pit

Rehearsing “Peter Pan” for the part of Michael Darling 

Launching the Lookbook for YeezyTM Spring Line

Working the child birthday circuit as a Strawberry Shortcake impersonator 

Spiritual
Believing yourself to have been reincarnated as a hashbrown

Personal

Being Pauly Shore

Recovering from pacemaker surgery

Heading to take an afternoon nap as a giant toddler 

Artifact

I teach an elective in cultural anthropology, but mostly I facilitate the discussion and my brilliant students lead me.

Today we were talking about the power of artifacts as a means of telling how people lived in a certain time. I asked, Tell me you were born in a particular decade without telling me you were born in a particular decade. Then I showed them my Paula Abdul cassette tapes.

We discussed how so many of our artifacts are now digitized and easily disseminated.

I then shared this digital artifact with the class in my Zoom screen:

photo courtesy Ben Crump Law Firm

I didn't share how I came across the picture; I offered it without preface of who and where and what. I simply asked the class how they felt when they saw it.

Peaceful, one student said.

Warm, another said.

A student who is a mother of two said, "That little boy is knocked out. He's living his best life. He's in the bosom place--it's the best."

We took a couple of beats to acknowledge how many of us knew this feeling, the mother and child bond, the safety of surrender.

Then I shared that this digital artifact, this picture, was used this very week in a court of law to tell a jury about how people lived.

Who is this little boy? I asked.

Oh.

Oh it’s George Floyd, they responded. It's George Floyd as a little boy resting in his mother's lap. The same mother, a woman some years deceased, whose name he cried out during his final moments.

That went from 0 to 100 fast, said one student.

Damn, said another student.

Why do we need artifacts to remind juries of people's humanity? Why do we need to see proof positive that we all come into the world defenseless? Why have the arbiters of justice and brokers of power in America so long subverted the humanity and equality of Black Lives?

Artist Titus Kaphar used this picture of a young George Floyd with his mother as inspiration for his cover of TIME Magazine. Kaphar wrote, “ I see the black mothers who are unseen, and rendered helpless in this fury against their babies. As I listlessly wade through another cycle of violence against black people, I paint a black mother … eyes closed, furrowed brow, holding the contour of her loss.”

"It's weird," said one student. "When you first showed us the picture, I felt all warm and now I just feel gut-punched."

It's my hope, though, that the jury members will hold this picture in their hearts, hold it close in their bosom place.

Thirteen

I don’t know if this is still an expression in Korean parlance, but in 2007, an elder at our Korean church announced that I was a woman “who was no longer alone.” Meaning I was pregnant with you.

As was pretty on-brand for me in my twenties, I resented the phrase. Pregnancy did not automatically change me from “no longer” anything, especially as determined by an elder male. That was for me to determine.

Some weeks later, I was sitting at my work cubicle and struggling to stay awake. I know, I know. You’re like, Mom, can you not with the tale again about how you were all working and grad schooling and commuting and incubating a human. WE GET IT. You’re Pioneer Woman.

Okay but this is important. Because my boss called me into his office and waved a report at me that I had “written.” He basically said there was nothing in it he could use. You’ve probably never had someone tell you that, or maybe you have, but since you are not a “hard-o” like I am, let me assure you. That reckoning should have been devastating and I should have been way insulted. Instead I was just so tired all the time that it just made me feel…sad. For my boss. Because he was depending on me to do the dang thing and I was just a tired fail potato that housed a Costco sized M&Ms every afternoon.

I went to the restroom (as I did in those days every 12 minutes) to pull myself together.

I stood in the stall and held my belly and felt the full freight of my sadness. And then I felt you. You turned and for the first time I could discern the outlines of your head, your back, your legs all tucked. Sacred encounters can happen anywhere, and there I met the holy and the wholly lovely person who had been with me for all the conversations and the commutes and the interminable classes at night. I was no longer alone.

I had no idea. No clue. Not even a speck of the dustcloud that trails after the miracle on which a love like you floats.

You are musical and hilarious. You are still a nature baby, held in the thrall of frogs and turtles and other amphibious creatures. You speak fluent sarcasm and can carry a bit with an ease that amazes me. We recently met a family at the dog park whose Boston terrier named Monte has spawned an entire fiction series that you will oftentimes play out while riding with me in the car. You are so beautiful and don’t know it. You are learning to love being you.

You spent this year fighting a personal crisis of which only you and Daddy and I will ever know the true depths. You will meet people in life, good and loyal friends and partners, who will learn about this crisis, but they will only understand it as ones learning about the events of a history instead of marching across the battlefield in combat. I hope you will remember what we learned in fighting this war alongside you, and that you will always know the miles we would travel to help deliver you to safety.

Throughout this past year, none of us have been alone. We have been always together, and the edges of where we began and ended became blurred by the seasons that bled into one another that we have called this long quarantine. We dream of a time when we will be free of the restriction and the fear and the stupid masks. But we also know there will be a loss that accompanies this freedom, and that loss will be the togetherness we will have called Never Being Alone. I would not relive this year for all the M&Ms in the world, but I will not soon trade in the marvel of once again finding myself with you.