What kind of crisis person are you?

Posters of affirmation have started showing up in my neighborhood park. This is Corona-love.

When I was in the third grade, a tornado ripped through our small Texas town. We lost electricity for what seemed like several weeks (but was maybe two days). I can remember standing over the kitchen sink, my hands sunk in the soapy water, hot tears streaming down my face. I was absolutely beside myself over the herculean task of washing the dinner dishes BY HAND. Please keep in mind that there were eight people in my family, and I was a wee helpless babe. My mother walked over to me and said (rather sternly if I remember correctly), “Right now you are deciding what kind of person you will be in a crisis — how you will act when times are tough.”

I decided right then and there that in times of crisis I would be a whiny, crybaby.

Since then, I’ve slugged my way through Hurricane Rita (epic evacuation), Hurricane Harvey (epic flooding), and now COVID-19 (epic everything). And for the record, let’s also count raising four kids as an integral part of my crisis management portfolio, because COME ON.

Guys, in each of these situations I’ve been a whiny crybaby, a take-charge woman, and a long-sufferer. I’ve been hopeless, optimistic, resolved, logical and out of my ever-lovin’ mind. I’ve been all of the things. And right now? I’m often all of the things in the course of a single afternoon. But what I do know is that I have to keep moving. I have to keep trying to do better and to feel better, to be kinder and more gracious. Because what else is there to do? (Besides Netflix obviously.)

Do you follow @MaggieSmithPoet (of Good Bones fame) on Twitter? In 2018, as Smith’s marriage was ending, she started working through her grief and disappointment in a series of posts that always included the sentiment “Keep moving.” I love these tweets and will often jot them down in my daily notebook as new ones arrive.

Lucky for us, Maggie Smith has a Keep Moving book coming out in May. I’m anxiously awaiting its delivery.

And that’s it fellow quarantiners, my advice to all of us is to keep moving. Do one thing today. And then another tomorrow. What’s your ONE THING today?