Tag: favorite

My Favorite Masks

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My favorite masks are, of course, the ones that fit me best. That are most snug on my face without squishing my nose. They are soft and comfortable. And they also need to be thick. 

Tyler and I have two surgical masks and about a dozen homemade masks, but as I don’t own a sewing machine they were not made by me. Our mothers each made one. My mother sent a couple that were given to my dad and ordered a few for us, and I ordered six for us from Etsy. Of all these, the one that fits me the best and seems to be the best quality is this the woman/teenager size from ZhenLinen on Etsy.

I wear masks at work whenever I’m not in my office, when in drive-thrus, and when I have to go to the grocery store. Basically, any time I’ll be anywhere near another person, I wear a mask to protect myself and others. Below is a simplified, but effective info graphic about how masks protect you and others: 

I’d planned to talk more about masks, but yesterday, a good friend and her husband, who is a front line healthcare provider, were accosted while grocery shopping for wearing masks. I’m still an incandescent pillar of fire over the disrespect of this horrid woman, who butted herself into their lives and their day and their physical space because she didn’t like that they were wearing masks. My friends are both white. Imagine how much worse this entitled, selfish white woman would have been if they hadn’t been white also.

They weren’t hurting her or affecting her at all by wearing masks, but this woman felt like she had the authority to lecture them about wearing their masks in public. She proclaimed both the CDC and the WHO to be spreading misinformation (which I’ve also seen on my Facebook timeline and judged you sharers harshly for). This woman declared that they didn’t need to wear the masks, as if she is more trustworthy than those organizations and more knowledgeable than my friend, who has personally cared for COVID-19 patients. And when this healthcare worker patiently explained his job and expressed that the masks were primarily for her protection, she declared he should just stay home, as if he doesn’t need to run errands and buy food, just like she does. As if he isn’t human. 

You can’t share videos of crying nurses, order takeout because that restaurant donated meals to hospitals, and get a warm feeling at every commercial applauding healthcare workers then accost people in the grocery store, demanding they remove their protective masks. Even if my friend hadn’t been a healthcare worker, those masks don’t hurt other people. They are a personal choice, like a rain jacket during a hurricane. Even if it isn’t raining right where you are personally standing at that moment doesn’t mean you know more about the weather than the person in the jacket. And their rain jacket isn’t bothering anyone else anyway.

While we’re on the subject, the global pandemic isn’t over just because you’re bored. And it isn’t over simply because you’re ready for it to be. 

And if all of that isn’t good enough for you, just mind your own damn business.

If you think masks trample on your person liberties (I can only assume you don’t wear a seatbelt either), don’t trample the liberties of the people who choose to wear them. Those people are human, like you. They might be providing an essential service, like scanning your groceries or delivering your meals. They might be the very ones who intubate you when you have bilateral pneumonia from COVID-19. They might even be the last human beings you see if you die in the hospital from this disease. 

Stay home. Wear masks when you must to go out. And, at the very least, mind your own business.

Mary Oliver

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Yesterday we learned of the death of Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets. I enjoyed seeing her work filling my Twitter feed, including poems I’d never read and many familiar verses.

I can’t articulate well why Mary Oliver was one of my favorite poets. I read her poetry collections slowly, alone, with a pencil to underline beautiful lines, but I inevitably failed to use it because each line is so visceral and enrapturing. Mary Oliver came with honesty in her hands and I floated in her words, comforted. And now she is resting. I pray it is peaceful.

In an earlier version of this post, I quoted six of my favorite Mary Oliver poems. However, a friend rightly point out that Mary Oliver’s works are all under copyright. I don’t want to keep anyone from paying for her art by supplying her words here, so I’ve replaced the poems with links to some of my favorite collections of her works. If you haven’t invested in one of her collections, or if (like me) you’re wanting to get another one, I heartily recommend these three.

–A Thousand Mornings
–Dog Songs
–Owls and Other Fantasies

Color Questions

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A couple of days before my brother proposed to his girlfriend, I texted him to ask what her favorite color is. I wanted to send them engagement gifts in time for the big question and wasn’t sure what color to pick for hers.

He texted back, “Green (I think, double checking).”

I started to text back, “No wait! If you don’t know, you don’t want to ask outright!” But I didn’t. After all, I wouldn’t get upset if my husband didn’t know my favorite color. Actually, I was pretty sure he didn’t. I couldn’t remember us ever talking about it, and if we had it’d been years earlier. We’d known each other 9 years before we started dating, after all. We simply didn’t have as many of the expected “get to know you” conversations in our remembered past.

So I looked at my husband and said, “My favorite color’s red. I don’t expect you to have known that.”

His ears hadn’t been ready to listen, and I hadn’t given any context, so he asked me to repeat myself and then asked a couple of clarifying questions. Once done, he said thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“I didn’t think so,” I told him. I don’t use it in decorating or wear a lot of red or anything. “But I wanted to tell you.” Then I asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

“It’s blue.”

“Okay,” I answered. “That’s what I would have guessed.”

The summer after I graduated from high school, my youth minister, his wife, and our head pastor took as many graduates from the church as wished to go (as I remember, there were 3 or maybe 4 of us) to a lake in TN for a long weekend. As we played cards after dinner the first night, one of my fellow grads sat forward.

“I want to confess something,” she announced, loud enough to attract the entire’s room’s attention.

We weren’t from a denomination where confession is done publicly or in a structured time/place, so no one seemed to know quite what to do.

“My whole life,” she continued after a moment, her face rapturous, “whenever someone’s asked what my favorite color is, I’ve said green. But really, it’s blue.”

The room fairly erupted into laughter and applause.

She hurried to explain, “Everyone always says their favorite color is blue, and I didn’t want to be like everyone else, so I said green. But it’s really blue.”

The adults fanned their faces and sagged with relief into their chairs. “I thought this was going to be something serious!” one exclaimed.

“Well,” said my friend, still in a very good mood, “it is. I’ve always known the truth about myself but I didn’t share it. And we’re talking about who we want to become when we go to college. I just want to be more myself, and have the confidence to say what’s true even if it’s the same as everyone else.”

I, meanwhile, did a gut check of my own favorite color. It’s red, isn’t it? I questioned, searching my feelings as I outwardly applauded. Yup. Definitely red. I didn’t have a cool revelation to share and shock everyone—which held a measure of appeal to me—but I knew my favorite color.

My brother soon texted back, “Her favorite color is blue and I sense I’m in a teensy bit of trouble.”

“Uh oh!” I answered. “Tyler didn’t know mine either if that helps.”

Except, now I’m wondering.

I just picked out colors for a wedding and a whole registry worth of household items. How much red had I chosen? I looked up from my brother’s texts and studied the room: a Christmas pillow on the armchair, the wreath on the door, the tree skirt. That was about it. The watercolors I’d bought for our home didn’t include red. Our quilt was mostly purple with stripes of neutrals and bold colors in the same palate. Our dinnerware wasn’t red. The clothes I’d bought that fall included 2 red sweaters, but I had many more neutral sweaters, and my closet hadn’t felt complete without a purple one. I never pushed for red towels and I’d originally planned to change the red, grey, and white shower curtain in one of the bathrooms, but it grew on me.

So how do I feel about red?

I still get a zip from it. The 2 red stripes on the quilt. Red cars. Red Christmas accents. My Atlanta United jersey. My car.

In general, I find red more imposing than I used to, and than I prefer. I don’t want to see red walls or red linens every day for the whole year. No red drinking glasses. No red towels. No red coats or art. A friend chose red as her accent color for her winter wedding, and I liked it, but I was glad I’d chosen sapphire blue, with a little peachy pink for variety.

What colors am I preferring these days? I looked around again. My coat, favorite long and short-sleeve shirts, much of the quilt, and new journal are all purple. Our towels, koi watercolor prints, cooler, bridesmaid dresses, bouquets, new cell phone, and favorite highlighter are all blue.

I don’t know that all this constitutes a change in my official favorite color. I don’t have to decorate with or wear a color for it to be my favorite. But I also know I’m not the same person I was as a child and teen and high school graduate. Gratefully so. It’s conceivable that one’s favorite color might change. And maybe that’s the case with me.

Why am I think about all this? It’s a new year. And at a new year, I tend to evaluate myself and my life. What’s working for me? What would I like to build differently or new this year? What do I know about myself that I didn’t a year ago? Some years I think about shoes, some years I think about colors. And, since I’ve been sick with a bad sinus infection since NYE, missing days of work on top of the holidays I already had off, I’ve had a lot of time to look around my apartment and wonder.