On Showing Up
Источник: https://barbaraoneal.substack.com/p/on-showing-up
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Photo by Khanh Do on Unsplash 
 This morning, my husband presented a pile of Christmas cards for me to sign. He stresses about the cards every year. He takes a lot of time choosing them for his small, select group of family and friends, curating which card goes to which person, and then presenting them to me to sign.

 I am not a Christmas-card sender, despite my love of mail. As a young mom and a working writer—always, always under some kind of extreme deadline—anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary fell away. When Neal began offering me the cards each year, I would scrawl my signature and be done.

 This morning, I was hurrying to get a couple of packages together for him to take to the post office. My to-do list felt heavy. I sat down to scrawl my name.

 And then I stopped.

 I took a breath, opened each card, and imagined the people who would receive it. By now, I know everyone on his list quite well, and it gave me a small, unexpected pleasure to see their faces in my mind, to imagine their smiles when they opened these beautiful cards. Instead of the simple scrawl, I wrote a sentence to each one and drew a heart. Not much—but it was a way of showing up.

 Showing up has been on my mind a lot lately. One of my teachers talks often about community, and she said something that stuck with me: community is inconvenient.

 We attend tai chi classes twice a week in our tiny community. It’s a small class even at its most robust, topping out at seven or eight people. For many reasons, our attendance over August and September was patchy. When I finally committed to showing up consistently again, one of the students said, “Jeez, I’m glad not to be the only one tonight.”

 It startled me. Tai chi isn’t going to save the world, or even save democracy, but it is a way of being in community—a third space that so many of us have lost over the years. I value the teachers, the class, and the practice itself, which feels deeply right for me. If that’s true, then my presence matters, even when I’m tired from writing all day, when my back hurts, or when I’d rather walk on the beach.

 Or I might lose it.

 Last year, I started a book club with my little neighborhood cul-de-sacs, and it has been such a joy in my life that I can’t imagine why I didn’t do it sooner. I love books, and talking about books, and eating with friends. As with every book club, the actual discussion of the book is a very small part of our time together—and that’s fine. We catch up. We bear witness to what’s happening in each other’s lives. We show up.

 I am a woman with a singular, intense focus on work I love. To protect that work, I learned long ago how to draw firm boundaries around my time. I was also raised in a family that didn’t socialize much outside of relatives. Like many of us, I gave myself permission to opt out—of the phone call, the yoga class, the walk with a friend, the regular coffee date; of sending Christmas cards, of writing notes to people who might need them. All the small acts that quietly weave a life of community together.

 It is inconvenient to build and sustain community. Sometimes you have to put up with people who get on your last nerve. Sometimes you want to curl up with your tablet and watch YouTube. Sometimes it’s cold outside, and staying in feels easier.

 When we arrived in Bandon, my husband fell in with neighbors who attend every city meeting—planning commission, city council, and now the Chamber of Commerce. It has created a kind of blossoming in him. Until now, I’ve skipped those meetings, but I suspect I may begin adding them in. I want to be a member in good standing in this world, in this little town, in my state, my country. Showing up is how I do that.

 Not to everything—we can’t. But mostly, I’m going to put on my going-outside clothes, real shoes, and a little lipstick, and go to the thing: the meeting, the book club, the tai chi class, the Zoom gathering. I’m going to take the phone call and write the note.

 I’m going to show up.

 Even when it’s slightly inconvenient.

What is your relationship to community, to showing up? Did you have a family like mine, or were you taught something else? 

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