Whatever This Is

An eechie beechie for the present moment

For a brief time in college I dated a person who grew up in a language immersion school. As kindergartners, they were tasked with reviving a language which had been nearly obliterated as only young nimble minds can do. Their sweet little social experiment was not to remember, but to notice what needed terminology and fill the gaps.

At the same time, on the leeward side of the Rocky Mountains, I was also naming things I felt needed distinct words. Most notably the pinched sippy portion of the sipper cup lid made by Tupperware which I termed the “Eechie Beechie.”*

It did not catch on.

What did you name, I wonder?

This burbled up this week as I found myself looped into an organizational State of Union: where we are vs. where we thought we might be a five years ago when we etched a strategic plan into stone and slide decks. Before most of us knew what a coronavirus looked like,

The last time I was seated in an auditorium of peers for a State of the Union was 2008: I had just started working at the college when the economy pooped out, glad for a $35 annual raise when the job market was meager and nothing felt certain. We rallied, like young folks did before social media existed - let alone went sour - enjoying happy hour not for inexpensive alcohol, but for half priced apps and unending buckets of fries and chips, spending our annual raise in a single night out.

Nothing is certain, as we know by now, but gosh did I particularly enjoy the illusion of certainty.

You too?

We - the collective way back when - missed the BHAG - or Big Hairy Audacious Goals that had been set by the board of directors who maybe weighed spreadsheets and algorithms, but also may have established the goals via ring toss or the hushed tones that happen on corporate golf courses where I’ve never wandered.

So this year, in a community of fellows who had forged goals in a before that couldn’t conceive of this sort of after, I had the opportunity to reflect. The speaker of the moment suggested three unforeseen obstacles: COVID, the subsequent rebound RSV situation, and what they so eloquently described as “…whatever this is.”

Life these days is inconvenient like my diarrhea poisoned like my dog, who didn’t consciously choose a fourth floor condo, but did choose to ingest the unsavory swamp monster that has colonized and hijacked her bowels, forcing them into an accelerated and urgent curse.

Words matter to all of us, whether we consider ourselves wordish or not.

And so, I’m afraid, do their absence.

We can make meaning of the things we know and identify. Those with shared understanding and purpose. There’s nothing magic about the word chair, other than we all seem to agree that it is generally a piece of furniture which requires the sitting in 90 degree hip flexion (give or take) with a back rest (more often than not) and that there are prescribed ways in which a person demonstrates their cultural capacity by sitting in one (I’ve heard the way I cross my legs is not how a lady does such a thing).

It’s notable to feel wordless - like you cannot capture and convey something in a moment of trauma. We’ve all had lived experiences of not having words - in fact, it’s my third “Holding Space” bumper sticker. These are the things you say when you really shouldn’t be adding or fixing, but silence feels incorrect. It’s what you can say instead of the dreaded AT LEAST.

1. I’m glad you’re here
2. That must be hard
3. There are no words for this

Words are weird. Midwife feels like it ought to refer to a woman (although it doesn’t), there is a vast expanse of The Land of Taboo** which exists between childless and childfree. Cis and trans have leapt from their origins*** in organic chemistry and now offer important clarity in a heroic maneuver to impart structure and reverence to ways of relating to gender. Context beyond rings and double bonds - the seedlings of community which can only form once we have words.

Whatever this is is my anchor - my acorn - to describe succinctly and powerfully this chapter of humanity or global upheaval.

What is yours?