Mending, Tending, Extending
Hello, 2021. Yes, 2020 was the year like no other. The pandemic. The election.
But other things—I’ll resist calling them smaller—happened,
too. 2020 was also the year in which I learned about mending, tending, and
extending.
* I broke my wrists, both of them, and learned a new
acronym: FOOSH, for fall onto outstretched hands. Related: I also became more
aware of my intake of calcium and vitamin D, and the value of weight-bearing
exercise. Also (again) that impatience doesn’t hurry healing. My first broken
bones. (March)
* I drastically cut my to-do lists. It was hard to focus,
early in the pandemic, so (beyond the basics—eating, showering) I did one small
but important task on a project. And then the next task. Sometimes I could do
two in a day, but I only had to do
one. And projects got finished. “One thing a day” really helped me stay afloat
through all the feelings everywhere. (April)
* I drew Hunter Biden’s face for 31 straight days. It had nothing
to do with the man per se; I chose the project because of the photograph from a
profile in The New Yorker. The image
is striking—I remembered it more than a year after reading the article—and it gave
my drawing skills quite a challenge. Which I guess was the point. (October)
I mean:
