Nobody teaches you what to do when someone you love loses someone they love. You want to show up. You know flowers will die in a week. You don’t want to send another fruit basket. You don’t want to say the wrong thing, so you say nothing, and then you feel terrible about that too. I have been there. Most of us have.
First, let me be clear. If you want to spend your snow day horizontal, watching whatever you want to watch, snacking on things you normally talk yourself out of, and calling it self-care, I am completely supportive. That is a fully valid use of a snow day and I will defend your right to it. This is for the other mode. The one where you’re restless and the snow is pretty and you keep picking up your phone and thinking “I should really do that thing I never have time for.”
Back in October I signed up to get timed tickets to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The plan: a family road trip to D.C. to see the sights and explore this new museum. Back when I got the tickets, I was imaging a different president but alas, we were determined to make it a good trip. We left NY around 8:30am on a Friday and after roughly 4 hours on the road (with one pit stop), we arrived just in time to park the car near our AirBnB and zip back to the museum in a cab. Let’s start with the line – it was DOWN the block. Hundreds of people were waiting outside. And I’d like to add a very diverse set of people. Young, old, black, white, American, foreign – though a lump formed in my throat at that moment I held back the emotion because my daughter and husband love to tease me for crying (emotional thugs!).