Sally Vardaman

I said my focus for the year would be on endurance. While it’s a theme that has been moving to the center of my consciousness for a long time, I credit Jennifer Pharr Davis for pointing my gaze to Endurance specifically.

I just finished her book The Pursuit of Endurance. It’s great. It has tons of wisdom on what it means to endure. But it is SO MUCH MORE.

I read a lot. The authors that reel me in most are those who show a deep contemplation of how to live a meaningful life. Pharr Davis is clearly that kind of writer, that kind of thinker.

But lots of writers do that…

So yes, she has compiled some wonderful stories about endurance. But these aren’t stories about enduring passively the shit life deals us. Her stories are about finding, indeed choosing, the tough paths we find meaningful, choosing the paths that are true to ourselves on a deep level. Then they’re about enduring the struggles that come with choosing our own path.

If you know me or follow me, you know I’ve come to love hiking. Unlike Pharr Davis, my love is for some pretty tame day hiking. I share none of the ambition for overcoming significant feats or the time at which they are completed. Yet.

But she said something I felt to be viscerally true, which I had learned as I grew to love hiking:

“There is something very powerful and very healing about physical forward motion.”

When in doubt, when in struggle, it is empowering to stand and put one foot in front of the other. Because that is often all we can do, and that physical act reminds our physiology that we can.

So the other thing she said that profoundly resonated with me is: “Hiking is not escapism. Hiking is realism.”

I’m a big fan of realism, of truth seeking. Hiking is a great metaphor for life’s struggles, so I believe her.

Her books, her story, are about finding ourselves. They are about an intentional exploration into our deepest selves. About asking ourselves the most pertinent questions we long to answer. Her writing is about the journey of finding our exquisitely unique parts. And about how part of the answers are found reflected in the complexity of others’ responses to us, as they are on their own journeys

What Pharr Davis does that sets her writing apart is celebrate individuality alongside love of community and a shared greater good. She values understanding and tolerance and finding common ground, and consciously doing so where those things are hardest to find. She doesn’t call it this but I do…

She espouses love.

I recommend her writing highly, and this book in particular.

(Every year I post the books I’ve read that year. I thought I’d start saying something about the ones I really love. I’m not a reviewer, but I’ll always share about books I love.)

Every year I set an intention, and every year I write about it here. Recent years were, in order, the year of the hike (‘20), the year of the book (‘21), and the year of the home (‘22). Well, 2022 turned out to be at least as much about the book (still to come), but the home has a new furnace and a/c (!), but still needs a lot of attention. Also, I hiked a bunch and became more regular in my yoga practice.

So, as I looked forward to the new year, I thought I just needed to do more of all those things.  For the first time in years, no single area of focus compelled me. 

But then I looked over my list of books I read this year, which I also post here annually (see below).  Seeing a book I read by Jennifer Pharr Davis, Becoming Odyssa, reminded me of her book still on my “to read” list:  The Pursuit of Endurance. 

Endurance.

It’s a thing I have only come to prize in this stage in life.  I’ve known for years I needed to stop expecting life to be free to struggle and heartache.  I’ve wasted a lot of energy panicking over things I could have just set about managing.

So for 2023, I shall focus on endurance.  Endurance for my book and other writing, my home, my hiking and yoga practice – endurance for my life itself.  I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but it won’t be a marathon. Maybe I’ll be able to hang onto my sweaty foot long enough to stay in dancer pose for a literal hot minute. We shall see.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year and plenty of endurance throughout 2023.

Books I read in 2022:

I haven’t done this in a while. As a refresher, my “5 Things” posts were my way to share things that interest me without creating a bunch of individual posts on social media. I constantly toil in reading and other things, and obsesses about the meaning of it all. It is a small club of those who want to join me in those discussions, so I consolidate these shares for that smaller audience.

Much of my writing the last 10 years has ultimately centered around love, and these 5 Works of Love moved me.

1. Few people can go on late night TV and deliver a solid comedy bit that doubles as a eulogy for her recently deceased mother. But Maria Bamford can do anything. Highly recommend watching the bit (video within the link below), before reading the article.

Maria Bamford’s Incredible Stand-up About Her Mom’s Death (vulture.com)

2. I heard about Foreverland because there was a fuss about the author saying she hates her husband. This interview was so compelling I had to read it. It is the loveliest meditation on a marriage I’ve read to date, especially the part about hating her husband.

Heather Havrilesky on the ‘divine tedium’ of a long marriage | MPR News

3. Imani Perry’s interview on her new book includes a lovely discussion on what it means to raise African American boys in our current climate.  “It is not a terror, it’s a gift.” 

Imani Perry’s ‘South to America’ reflects on the region’s problematic history : NPR

4. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t a fan of women’s college basketball, but this is a game and a story worth highlighting, even if you don’t share my love of the sport. LSU narrowly beat the much lower seed Jackson State University. LSU Coach Kim Mulkey was a class act in praising the JSU team and coach, but JSU coach Tomekia Reed had a great response on why that wasn’t the compliment Mulkey intended. Great to see a coach with such talent, commitment, and purpose. I cannot wait to see all Reed accomplishes in the years to come.

Kim Mulkey told Tomekia Reed she ‘won’t be at Jackson State long’ unless they pay her (clarionledger.com)

5. Lastly, Minneapolis Public School teachers have been on strike for most of the last three weeks. As my children near graduation, we have had the great fortune of 13 years of MPS teachers in our lives, and we are better because of their influence. When 97% of 4,500 educators are willing to forfeit their paychecks because of working conditions, I believe their concerns are valid. Thank you, Minneapolis teachers, for holding the line, fighting for educational supports and smaller class sizes, but also working to find a deal so everyone can get back to the classroom. We love you!

So happy to join the Silver Linings show on 1/31/22 of Morningside After Dark. This wonderful Twin Cities variety show is in its 10th season! My piece is just after the 15:20 mark. I am so honored to be among these beloved and seasoned artists!

https://youtu.be/BjdB3rFCnTE

The Year of the Book

There is almost nothing in my life I would claim to have figured out.  I suck at crafting traditions.  For a mom, I really suck at Christmas, though my Christmas Fettuccine was fantastic this year.  (What, you don’t derive your holiday traditions from Nancy Meyers’ films?)   But I have found a way to start each year that makes me very happy, because it feels doable.  It comes with no measurement, only purpose.  

As I mentioned last year, I don’t do resolutions – I only set an intention, an area of focus for the year.  2021 was the Year of the Book.  I chose to spend a lot of time on a collection of essays I’ve had in process for YEARS.  When a last minute class opportunity came up that would get me help on my project, I forked over the money and showed up.  When an acquaintance offered writing coaching, I ponied up time and cash for that too.  The notion of choosing an area of focus means I make that thing a priority for my time and resources.  It is about effort, not about outcome.  But this time, I really wanted to finish the goddamn thing.  

While it is not done, I got it as far as I could on my own.  And I have the path charted to its completion.  The class I took?  Its amazing instructor taught me how important an editorial collaboration is to fulfill one’s own creative vision.  “You don’t need an editor,” he said.  “You deserve one.”  Thanks to his wisdom, my draft starts the new year in a gifted editor’s hands.  My joy over this is immense.  My kids are great at Christmas, despite my poor example, and my daughter painted this canvas to commemorate the milestone.  

My drive to write more became a desire to read more.  An unintended achievement was that I read more books than in previous years.  Between audio and paper, I read 42 books.  If you can read my handwriting, the list is here.  I tried to pick a favorite and couldn’t, but Ann Patchett features prominently with good reason.  I noticed structure as I read more than before, and Ann Patchett knows structure.  

2022 is The Year of the Home, a strange urge to nest just as my nest begins to empty.  In a year and a half my children will all be adults, most likely college students.  Hopefully my nesting will make coming home more appealing?  We will see.  I will finish my book, a carryover from 2021, and will probably read quite a few too.  I will clock my hiking mileage throughout the year, a legacy of 2020’s Year of the Hike.  And most of all, I will work on making my home more…. homey.

I don’t know what this year will hold, but I have faith in the power of choosing my focus at its start.  Whatever 2022 brings, my life will be enriched by where I place my attention.  

Two weeks ago I had breast reduction surgery.  After 35 years of walking through the world with an enormous bust and associated neck and back issues, I was ready. 

I shared this with friends online because I didn’t want to have the have-you-lost-weight conversation over and over, and I wanted anyone considering this very common surgery to consider me as a willing resource.  Just after the surgery, social media was an easy home for my euphoria, relief, and compulsion to joke about it.  But elective surgery is no joke, and here is a fuller picture of my experience so far.

The choice:

My breasts developed before I was out of grade school, and I was a DDD cup before I got to high school.  Back and neck aches were standard.  I was also an incredibly anxious kid, storing tension in those same trouble spots with no self awareness I was doing so.  I knew breast reduction was a thing, and a thing people like me justifiably sought.  

I’ll wait until I have kids, I thought, make sure I’m able to breastfeed.  Three kids and no success at breastfeeding.  I mean, these things were worthless!  

I’ll wait until my kids are older.  It’s such a risk to have elective surgery when they are so young.  I was also on the heels of back to back c-sections, so that was probably a good call.

Then a healthy and fit friend of mine died from complications of what should have been a very routine surgery.  Then my only thought became, Oh hell no.  So I tabled the notion for a decade.

Over the last 18 months my recurring back and neck issues inflamed my shoulders.  First a pinched nerve in my back and sharp pain in my shoulder, and the discovery of a bulging disc at the top of my spine.  Then when I worked through the pinched nerve, a frozen shoulder developed on the other side.  I had a minimal strength training routine – light weights, exercises I could do at home, to avoid those very issues.  Even those efforts were hampered.  It came to the point where I wasn’t sure I could keep facing these issues as my body aged.  The bulging disc was not severe enough to warrant its own surgery.  It was just one more piece to the whole puzzle.  

I asked around, got some names of surgeons, and went for the consultation.  The surgeon explained in great detail the process and potential complications.  I learned breast reduction has one of the lowest rates of complications among plastic surgery types, which I was relieved to hear.  And I was ready.  My months of orthopedic and physical therapy visits made me a slam dunk for insurance approval.  We scheduled the surgery three months out, and I waited.  

The surgery:

I went into this surgery with a great deal of fear.  My initial relief to have it behind me was enormous.  And by fear, I mean I almost shoved a copy of my will in my best friend’s hand on the way to the surgery center.  I decided not to dump my worst anxiety on her at the 11th hour.  Listening to my incessant nervous joking before and dealing with me high as a kite after was enough responsibility for one day.

I was both terrified and so ready.  I prepared myself to be miserable and in pain, because surgery will do that.  I went from an F cup to a C, so I expected my body to feel it.  My pain was minimal, even the night after the surgery.  Even my doctor’s staff was surprised at the check up how little pain I had.  Maybe it was the comparison to my last surgery, a c-section, after which I had a toddler and twin babies in my care.  

Anesthesia and narcotics make me nauseous, which has made recovery from previous surgeries very difficult.  This time they managed to give me enough of whatever that this was not much of an issue.  I got home and went right back to sleep. When I woke up I was plenty sore and tired, but felt no serious pain.  I took some ibuprofen just in case and alternated that with tylenol only on occasion for the next few days.

Two days later I could shower, which meant removing all the gauze stuffed around me.   I’m squeamish and hated this part.  I have a boatload of stitches and the gauze stuck to them.  After a lot of patient and gentle tugging, and even a call to the nurse line, I got them off.  This was an issue everytime I removed gauze until I could do without it for comfort (just over a week later).  I still have to apply and remove fabrics gingerly as they are still prone to sticking.

Then there was the cost. My share is about $3,000 and friends who have messaged me for more information have been given a similar estimate from their health plans, so this seems fairly consistent across commercial, employer-sponsored health plans. Only in very recent years could I have afforded it. If you are considering this surgery, make no assumptions. Call your health plan and get an estimate of your cost share.

Today (two weeks post surgery):

I have a lot of swelling and need to be careful with the (dissolvable) stitches.   I still use an ice pack occasionally for the swelling.  I have numbness in some spots and have to watch that closely.  It is too soon to say it “went fine.”  The first couple of months after surgery is when most wound related complications can occur.  The overall healing and settling is expected to take 9-12 months.

The week after surgery my neck and back muscles were so inflamed.  Maybe this is a normal body reaction to the invasion of surgery.  Maybe it is the extra lying down and resting.  What I have found, though, is I have to relearn a new posture.  My center of gravity is displaced.  Hell, that is why I did this, but I am surprised by the dramatic change.  This surgery extends some relief, but it is no quick fix.  I have a lot of work ahead to strengthen and retrain my long troubled muscles.  And the anxious kid who stores tension in her back and neck?  There is no surgery for that, and she is still in here too.  

I was sent home with a cotton sports bra and found it challenging to find other bras that were comfortable and didn’t irritate my incisions.  Even today I will change or remove it 4 times a day because the entire area is very sensitive.  Sweat and premenstrual bloating are acutely felt in this sensitive area.  It is a damn good thing I am working from home. 

My body:

Before and after the surgery, I have never looked in the mirror so much.   A real narcissism has taken hold here.  I am hardly thrilled with my appearance in general, but I would have never undergone the risks of surgery for purely cosmetic reasons.  I’ll admit, though, I like them.  

Now that I’m not afraid to look at the incisions, I stare for long periods.  They look great to me at times, and weird at others.  Sometimes they look so odd I can’t help but chuckle.  I am struck by how my response to my own image in the mirror can change from day to day, now and before this surgery.  Maybe I will always wrestle with the image I see and how I feel about her.  I am glad to be single right now because I have no room in my psyche for anyone else’s feelings about this change and its long healing phase.

As a woman, breasts are simply a prominent feature, regardless of size, because we are so damn obsessed with them.  Having such large ones sucks on many levels.  You can wear baggy clothes and just look round, or you can wear fitted ones and put them on parade.  I’ve worn a fully covering fitted shirt and had an employer tell me not to wear it again.  

As friends reach out (not all of them women) hoping for reduction at some point, this is the number one concern I hear:   “I should lose weight first.”  Maybe, maybe not.  Let a medical professional assess that.  We do not need to earn medical relief, we only need to take appropriate precautions to avoid risks, and surgery is not always the solution.  But we don’t have to suffer alone.  Physical therapy and massage have been huge supports for me long before this surgery, and what I learned from both will forever help me better care for myself.

Today I can say taking this action was a huge step for me, and an empowering one.  I am very glad I did it.  But there are no easy paths for long term physical discomfort.  We have to find the actions that work best for each of us. 

Nine months ago, George Floyd was killed three miles from our house.  We had driven through that intersection many times, 38th an easy cross street, running from Lakewood Cemetery to the Mississippi River.  I start that way still, remembering only when I get to Portland that I have to go around it.  There sits a barricade staffed by sweet but firm volunteers monitoring the entrance.  A block behind them the memorial is centered on that intersection where Mr. Floyd was killed.  

We are finally able as a country to talk about race and racism.  Many of us now roll our eyes at anyone still claiming not to see color.  Our condescension may as well pat them on their heads and send them down a grade for remedial education.  Unfortunately, such education is voluntary, and those attitudes often lack the curiosity needed to gain understanding around this divide.  Without curiosity, ignorance persists.  

We talk about race a lot.  We are not, though, talking about our brutality.  

In 1619, Jamestown colonists purchased enslaved Africans from British Pirates, who had stolen them from others.  Their arrival marks the start of slavery in the United States.  We were a nation yet to be formed, according to the New York Times 1619 Project, “157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country.”  These 20 or so people, originally from Angola, were the first of millions.  Before the colonists decided what this new land would become, they decided on whose backs they would build it. 

As 2020 came to an end, a man of color was shot and killed by Minneapolis police not far from the George Floyd Memorial.  This time the body cams were on.  This time the deceased appears to have shot first.  The sting of every incident is felt by every person in this city.  To a person of color who has learned to live in fear of the police, or government in general, it is another traumatic event.  It is heavy in its entirety, its meaning only reduced by its place in the overwhelming volume of previous such events.  How can you trust an organization of authority when most of your experience leads you to fear its brutality and distrust its tactics?

The colony called Virginia established a law in 1662 that the status of the child followed the status of the mother – any child born to a slave was also a slave.  Not only was such a woman a slave in her days, any sex she had, voluntary or not, could only produce a life enslaved.  Such a life dictated for production, outside any inclination to nurture and love that to this day we expect and demand of women.

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, during an overnight police raid.  Whatever the justification, the raid was executed poorly.   Incompetent staff allowed to run amok with weapons shows a desensitization to brutality.  For it to be done at the hand of the state is against all we claim to represent in our romanticized ideal of freedom.

In 1739 a group of enslaved Africans near Charleston banded together to fight and escape, known as the Stono Rebellion.  Forty of them were killed and a law was passed to prohibit such assembly. Violence is the only way to deny the freedom that is America’s promise.

On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot in St. Anthony, which borders Northeast Minneapolis.   The video footage his girlfriend captured, and Mr. Castile’s reputation as a beloved school teacher aid, family member and friend, galvanized this city in a furious demand for answers and change.   As we see in so many instances, presumption of guilt follows the dark skin.

In 1787 the Three-Fifths Clause was included in the United States Constitution.  It only bothered counting black bodies at all for political representation. Their bodies had no right to vote for said representation.  This was just another extraction of their commodity value.  Recognition of their humanity was not three-fifths.  They were measured still as property for political gain. Their humanity was not recognized at all. 

On May 15, 2010, just before his 17th birthday, Khalief Browder was arrested in The Bronx on suspicion of stealing a backpack.  Due to court backlog and other issues, he remained incarcerated for almost three years before his charges were dismissed.  The prosecutors never made a sufficient case against Browder to bring him to trial.  The system let him languish as they failed to prepare for trial.  The real delay was one that cannot be part of the equation in measuring the speed of justice.  Mr. Browder refused to take a plea deal, refused to say he had committed the crime the state could not prove.  Without a trial, much less a conviction, he was incarcerated for three years, two of which were in solitary confinement.  Across this time the abuse Mr. Browder experienced at the hands of prison staff and inmates is heartbreaking.  It is state sponsored trauma, documented on video.   If you haven’t heard his story, upon release he struggled mightily to craft a good and productive life, but the trauma got the best of him and he ultimately took his own life.

“On the morning of Monday, July 13, 1863, thousands of white workers in Manhattan erupted in what’s still the deadliest rioting in American history. Mobs rampaged through most of the week in an orgy of savage murder, arson and looting. They hung black men from lampposts and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets. They beat and murdered the pitifully small squads of policemen and soldiers the city initially mustered—and grotesquely defiled their corpses as well. It took federal troops to start restoring order to burning, rubble-strewn Manhattan that Thursday. The published death count was 119, but many New Yorkers believed the actual toll was hundreds more.” (from “White Riot: Why the New York Draft Riots of 1863 Matter Today” by John Strausbaugh, July 11, 2016, The Observer)

They were protesting the new draft law, which mandated military service except for those wealthy enough to pay a fee to escape it.  The mob’s rage on the black community because blacks, as non-citizens, were exempt from service.  Of course, many eventually fought and suffered and died in the Civil War on both Union and Confederate sides.

On March 3, 1991, Rodney King was apprehended for suspected drunk driving after a car chase.  He was brutally beaten and tased by four Los Angeles police officers.  The incident was caught on video and shared with a news station.  The bystander caught on film the same kind of brutality long experienced at the hands of the LAPD, the kind that could only be stopped by witnesses.  It was this same brutality that prompted black men in 1966 to follow police, and stand bearing witness with loaded weapons during traffic stops.  These men were “policing the police”, and they later became known as the Black Panthers.

In 1838 and 1839 the US enforced The Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a member of the Cherokee without the support of the larger tribe.  The Cherokee people fought the treaty and were forcibly removed by the US in a brutal capture and marching of their people to their new territory.  About 25% of them died on the way.  Their removal was so brutal it became known as the Trail of Tears.  We called the native Americans savages, but we prevailed only because we were more savage.  We fought with heavier artillery and a lighter sense of honor, often breaking the promises we made in the treaties we signed. 

Before dawn on December 4, 1969, FBI and Chicago police forces raided the apartment of Fred Hampton, a leader within the Black Panther Party.  These forces shot almost 100 times into the apartment, Hampton and a colleague died.  He was 21 years old.

In 1865, the formal institution of slavery ended, and so began the period of terror to ensure black people remained as a controlled workforce in the south.  

“[The Ku Klux Klan] would take people out of their houses or their cabins in the dark of the night, strip them out in a road, make them run down the road, make them sometimes lie on a rock where they would be whipped, where men would line up to whip them. Sometimes they would burn parts of their bodies.

These were sadistic tortures, the intention of which was — we know this from testimony — to stop these people from engaging in politics, to stop these people from trying to be independent economic actors, to stop these people from trying to get educated, from trying to be citizens.

The basic goal of the Ku Klux Klan was not this kind of sadism. It wasn’t even murder. It was to put black people back into their place as the labor force of the South, and not much beyond, and to drive out of business the political force, the Republican Party, that was trying to take them to higher places.

…This is a part of American history that isn’t easy to face. It tells us that we had a moment in our history when our politics broke down, our society broke down, our police power broke down; the government wasn’t functioning sufficiently enough to protect one group of citizens from another who simply engaged in wanton vigilante violence of the worst kind. We don’t like to face that. We don’t even want to know about it. We like to believe we are a society of security and progress and improvement. Reconstruction makes us face an era when we were something else.” – David Blight, Historian, Yale University (American Experience, PBS)

On the Smithsonian website there is an image of a chilling symbol from the mid-1800s of how our colonization of native tribes changed their way of life – the ration ticket.  People who for centuries lived as hunter gatherers or more agrarian lives were forced into white commercialism, a system that now decided how much tribal members could receive to eat.  Those systems often failed tribes, sometimes by incompetence, and others through sheer cruelty and intentional starvation.  

On May 19, 1920, conflict between anti and pro union forces concentrated into a gun battle on the streets of Matewan, West Virginia.  Ten people were killed including the town’s mayor.  Violence continued for a couple of years as the battle over workers’ rights waged into a near civil war.  A movie called “Matewan” made in the late 80s documents just how fierce this battle between labor and company became.

In the early 1900s a Black business district in Tulsa known as Black Wall Street thrived  This community was an example of Black abundance not common in the early decades after Reconstruction.  But an elevator ride for a young black teenage boy and white female elevator operator set whatever tensions existed on fire.  As the teen sat in jail black residents came to assist in his protection, and a mob of many more white men came and the black men retreated.  The white mob then descended on this black community, killing hundreds and destroying thousands of properties for over 18 hours, ending on June 1, 1921.  Just over 400 miles away in Memphis, my father was born on this same day.  

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, shot at least twelve times by rivals within the Black Muslim community.  The week before his house had been bombed and his wife and children went into hiding.  While not the only point of conflict, he was once admonished by the Nation of Islam and much of the nation for saying of the assassination of JFK, the “chickens had come home to roost.”  By that he meant the violence white America long tolerated had come to turn on them.  He was judged by this as though he celebrated JFK’s death.  I don’t believe he did.  I believe he, as he said at the time, was trying to hold America accountable for its tolerance of violence. But his words were silenced by violence from within the community to which he had devoted his life.      

Much has been written about why Floyd’s murder awakened the world in a way other events had not.  We witnessed his murder, yes, but his murderer watched us watch him do it.  Derek Chauvin looked back at us.  His face showed no remorse, no self consciousness, no shame.  He looked us in the eye while he extinguished the life of another.   While we see Chauvin’s face, it is easy to forget he is not looking at us.  He is looking at a young woman who dared point her phone at armed police officers.  Chauvin’s disaffected expression is as impervious to her presence as it was to George Floyd’s life.

I have painted a brief swath across our brutal history.  These are just a few highlights.  I’ve missed lynchings, the Birmingham church bombing, many assassinations, the march on Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the rap sheet of almost every police department in America. And I have bypassed entirely our behavior outside our borders.

From the earliest formations of America to today, our history is riddled with violence.  When we say this is not who we are, we must take another look.  Yes, racial disparity and racism are common features, but it all began with greed sated with violence.  America was built on the premise that forced labor was not only allowed, but a noble entitlement to the superior endeavor of the colonists.  The notion that the fruit of capitalism could and should be born of the oppression of others was integral to all our endeavors.  From every step thereafter, we refuse to own the lies that allowed that oppression.  

We didn’t become a racist society because we were averse to dark skin.  We became a racist society because we wanted to build a great and profitable nation.  The only shortcut was the oppression of others.  We needed someone to exploit for cheap labor to do it.   We had to find a group and label them as other –  less than – to justify kidnapping them and forcing them, generation after generation, into hard labor.  

Now the lies we told ourselves to justify this behavior have been ingrained in our psyches for 400 years.  We’re not brutal because we’re racist. We are brutal because we are greedy.   Skin color and culture are the means of our cognitive dissonance and they always have been.  This dissonance we conveniently sowed centuries ago is ingrained in our policies, our attitudes, our behavior, and ourselves.  It has been there so long even the most well meaning among us often cannot see it.  

I write this on February 14, 2021, the day after the US Senate failed to convict Trump of inciting the fatal violence his supporters inflicted on the Capitol last month.  Malcolm X’s words ring true today.  Our tolerance of violence is once again defining who we are.

Author note: this piece is an excerpt from Shoot The Arrows, a book of essays to my children, available late 2021.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I set an intention, an area of focus for the coming year. 2020 was The Year of the Hike. No set parameters, I just wanted to hike more and learn to independently navigate trails. Quick tip: this is a great idea if a global pandemic is looming,

My endeavor is documented on Instagram under @isallyvardaman, and in case that gives a false impression, I remain a novice. Some interpreted my posts as those of a seasoned hiker. #100, a milestone I did not expect to see, was the three mile walk from Tires Plus to my home so I could leave my car there for service. The whole point for me was that “hike” is a broad and simple concept.

Two years ago, a chilly November had me quickly overwhelmed by “winter.” This Mississippi kid has been here almost two decades, long enough to know I had to either give in to months of depression, or get out in the cold. When I opted for the latter, a friend suggested a hiking group through meetup.com.

Before that I had hiked only while on vacations which involved following handsome men. It never occurred to me I could do this at home, by myself, or even with total strangers. From the very first snowy December hike, I absolutely loved it.

It was easy. Sign up for a spot, dress for the weather, show up on time. I could follow along without a care as long as I could keep up, and I could! The company was great and our local trails are beautiful in winter. Content to follow the crowd, it was not about learning something new.

Slots filled quickly and my schedule didn’t align as often as I wanted to go. I grew curious about trails I didn’t know. It became clear I would have more fun more often if I learned, literally, to chart my own path. Maybe I could get good enough at it to lead others. Then I could give what had been so kindly offered to me by this group. 2020 was the place to start.

It began with informal outings with friends, smaller trips to practice trail navigation, with as many willing guinea pigs as I could fit in my minivan. I only got a group lost once early on. “Hike” as a loose term was my theme. We mostly hiked but sometimes did other fun things, like fat tire winter biking in Owatonna in February, during which I had to pause for my anxiety attack to subside. Some leader I am!!

Then COVID shut everything down.

I hiked with a friend the Saturday before my employer mandated us all home. I hiked with a friend that Sunday after. We let the distance widen as the protocols indicated. According to my official instagram record, I had 101 hikes, not including my almost daily walks in my neighborhood.

Travel was not in the cards this year.  Our vacation to New York City for spring break had to be cancelled just two weeks before. The reality of a pandemic had only begun to enter our psyches.   Seven months later, a brief jaunt to South Dakota was a welcome first for all us.    By then we were crafty at avoiding human interaction, a skill I’m not sure will serve my children long term. 

For the last 10 months, every social engagement in real life I had was in motion and on foot. In a small group or one on one, paved or unpaved, my walking habit kept me sane and connected. I saw graffiti and nature coexist. I saw the destruction of my city and its community lovingly tend to its aftermath. I processed all this with my kids and friends, putting one foot in front of the other. I breathed fresh air and basked in sunlight when I was down. My daily neighborhood walk frequently connected me with neighbors I rarely see otherwise..

I found my way on an uncertain path when I felt insecure. I learned to huff and puff while wearing a mask. Sometimes I got lost, even while leading others. I learned I could shift gears and recover on the fly, and still accomplish the intended goal. I met and got to know new faces in a year where that seemed impossible. I learned people are happy to follow me on a journey. They don’t even seem to mind mishaps if I establish risks and expectations up front.

This year reminded me of things I’ve long known, but fail to capitalize on. I love the quiet solitude of a walk alone. And with others, conversation naturally turns more meaningful when we move together.

I learned that adventure for me is simply loving movement – going from point A to point B, flanked by scenery, scents, sounds, company, or the unexpected. Adventure is anything I create it to be, anything I want it to be.

The last few days of the year I listened to Three Marriages by David Whyte, a lovely exploration of our primary commitments in life and where our self lies within them.  In it he looks back on a time he felt himself very off course

 “By what steps had I forgotten the promise I made as a child, not to fall into a false form of maturity, which is actually a form of non-participation; of not seeing, of not hearing, and not imagining.” 

I had no such awareness of what I gave up as I chased the independence of adulthood decades ago. How Whyte knew to promise himself such a thing is beyond me, much less how to revisit that goal later. As I listened to his tender wisdom, it occurred to me what I actually learned this year was how to play – really, how to give myself permission to do so.

I can play when I’m sad. I can play when I’m lonely. I can play when I celebrate and when I grieve. To play isn’t to have a game. To play is to fully engage with my surroundings.

And I will play more as I enter 2021, The Year of the Book. 

As we head into the scariest election of my lifetime, I am inspired by the ways people continue to live and attempt to thrive.

1. I am a lifelong fan of Beth Henley, native of my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. I stumbled upon this glimpse of one of her many plays I have yet to get to see, and look forward to the day I can see a production: Laugh.
2. I’ve fallen in love with the work of Larry Madrigal, who elevates the beauty and intimacy of the mundane and everyday.
3. I love this essay, but especially the truth it holds: “Art is always a performance. It can be true, but it is never completely honest.”
4. I just finished Hunger by Roxane Gay. It is hard to read a memoir about sexual assault and obesity, but the words of humanity and survival also make it hard to put down. Both experiences are common, and we should not pretend otherwise by looking away.
5. I frequently say my favorite setting is change of scenery. This is me yesterday in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at Falls Park, basking in the sunshine, time with my kids, and lots of pretty sights.

1.  I watched the Joan Didion documentary on Netflix currently, and was surprised to discover her essay on the Central Park Jogger case, asking important questions a decade before these gentleman were acquitted – an insightful consideration of competing resentments indeed.
2. Like in #1, as I age I am always surprised to hear voices had shouted the truth, but the sentimental narrative is still what sticks in our national psyche.  That is clearly true of Hiroshima and our national vengeance.
3. That very sentimental narrative we cling to likely will resist the truth of this.
4. And among legendary truth-tellers, Fannie Lou Hamer did just that 56 years ago today at the DNC.
5. You can argue big government and small government all day long, but when we fail to recognize the interdependence within our large economic system, we waste valuable resources in the name of saving money.