This has been A Big Week.
You may have read about some of these things in the news. The First Big Thing is that on Tuesday a short but intense thunderstorm ripped through Pittsburgh, uprooting trees, breaking parts of trees, ripping roofs off of some buildings, and taking out the power for approximately 325,000 people. Many schools, including Sarah’s and Amy’s were closed for multiple days due to a lack of power. We still do not have power in our house, but expect it to be back by this coming Tuesday. Seeing the massive destruction that occurred, I feel lucky that our only difficulty has been the lack of power. In the big picture, this is no biggie. I also recently reread The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and that really puts one’s troubles in perspective, as does reading the news about so many places right now.
Amy got home from school on Tuesday and questioned my statement that we were still going to our usual swimming session. She said she had gotten a severe thunderstorm warming on her phone. I hadn’t seen it on mine, but that is only because Sarah was playing with my phone. Still, I reasoned that there might be plenty of time before the storm actually hit. I was very wrong. As we drove, the sky looked increasingly foreboding. As Sarah likes to remind me, I said, “I don’t think so!” as I turned around. The drops started hitting the windshield, and a minute later the deluge was so strong I had to pull over because I couldn’t see. Trash cans were blowing across the street. As things calmed down a little bit I carefully drove home, and we dashed inside. About twenty minutes after it started, it was over. We are very lucky to still have our trees and house intact. The house across the street from us had a large tree come down in their yard. The destruction around the city is jaw dropping, but the community outpouring of support has been beautiful. Neighbors streamed out of their houses once the skies cleared, and we all stood around gaping and sharing stories of where we were when it started. Everyone started checking in with everyone, and those with power attached extension cords to the outside of their houses so others could charge their phones. Some grocery stores are offering a discount because so many people need to completely replenish their refrigerated goods. A pizza place that was due to have a grand opening instead served free pizza to all who were impacted by the storm.
Sarah’s school does not usually decide about closures the day before, as many schools now do. While I appreciate this, sometimes it can become farcical. On Wednesday night I got a call from her school that there would be a two hour delay Thursday because there was still no power, but that by 8:30am we would be told if school would be closed. This already seemed to be pushing it as Sarah would be on the road by then. Her bus picked her up at 8:20am on Thursday. At 8:45 I got the call that her school was cancelled. What the actual H-E-Double Hockey Stick?! Her driver turned around. Luckily, what could have been a massive upset turned into a fun day. Upon hearing the news, one of Sarah’s favorite people immediately offered to take her to the zoo so she had a grand adventure and wasn’t sad about missing school after all.
The Second Big Thing. . . Last week there was a night when Carl and I met in the wee hours as he was going to bed and I was getting up for the day. That is unusual for him to stay up so late, but it was because a project that he has been working on for years was finally launching. As he said, “After a decade of working on self-driving, we have closed our safety case and we are now operating driverless trucks in Texas, hauling commercial loads every day. This has been a long road for me personally, from driving around in my own car with a camera hooked up to my laptop to collect data so I could start working on perception algorithms, to building a team at Uber, to leading Autonomy at Aurora. Most of my focus over the past two years has been building up enough test cases, from common cases we see every day to challenge cases we’ve never seen before, and then passing those tests so that we could confidently say that we are ready to operate a 70,000 pound truck operating at 65mph on public roads. And that I would feel good about all of you driving next to our trucks, which I do. From this day forward, the world will have robot trucks hauling freight.”
The Third Big Thing is that Sarah had her junior prom. I was out of town so Anna spent the day with Sarah (because for whatever reason there is no school on the day of prom) and helped give her a fancy hairdo and get her ready for the evening. Carl ended his workday early to take her to school for the promenade with her friends, and then she and her friends went to the prom venue downtown. Apparently she had a great time, but her feet were tired from dancing. When I saw the pictures I wondered where my child was. It’s not that she looked grown up and was attending prom. It was that, but also I couldn’t find her sparkle. Certainly for every sparkly picture there may be twenty that aren’t, and that is on a normal day. For the promenade, I think she was a bit overloaded, which is understandable. Perhaps what is remarkable is that she did as well as she did rather than the fact that she looked distracted. Carl did get a beautiful picture of Sarah with Amy before the prom, and in that calm familiar setting she was sparkly, and I could recognize her. It is ever the journey to allow myself to have feelings of disappointment and my wish that the pictures could have documented the vision in my heart, and to come back to appreciating the reality exactly as it is. Did Sarah smile easily for the camera and look sparkly with her friends? Not so much. Does she have a group of friends that she can go to prom with? Yes! Did she have the same prom experience I did? No, but that will be true of Amy too. We all have our different moments. Did Sarah have a great time dancing at a big party? YES!
The Fourth Big Thing is that I attended my 30th high school reunion. Overall it was wonderful, and I felt like I was able to stay present and grounded in who I am today. I got to know some classmates better and feel like I have new friends. I connected with some of my teachers and even got to attend some of their classes. I learned things! The tricky thing is that now I want to go back and sit in on some of the classes for the next year, which will of course be difficult to arrange. I hope the current students understand how incredible their school and teachers are. I hope the teachers know how unique they are in their ways because they are just doing their thing and being wonderful, but they are shining individuals who show me more of how I want to be in the world. I loved sitting in Meeting for Worship. I went to a Quaker school and Meeting is when you all get together and sit in silence unless or until someone feels moved to stand and speak. The room is exactly as it was when I was a student, and there is nothing like sitting with a bunch of people all with the same intention of silence. It is different than meditating on my own, and it filled my heart to be part of it again. I know I could go to the Quaker meeting in Pittsburgh, but Sunday mornings are special to have at home too. I wish they had a Meeting every Wednesday morning, which is how I experienced it as a student. There were some small fraught moments where I felt sucked back into my younger self, insecure and feeling uncool and uncomfortable and not sure how to navigate through the moment. Those were tiny moments but unfortunately can take up a lot of my processing space. I am working to focus on all of the wonderful moments, but that feels a bit like driving a truck without power steering, pushing towards my desired destination and not letting myself drive down the zip strips.
May your internal and external weather be clear.
Leave a Reply