This is the biggest year of suck. 

This is my final editorial after three semesters as editor, and I planned to end on some hopeful or heartfelt note. Something about my lessons learned, etc. But honestly? I have three essays due this week, and I have barely started one. I’m writing this in my iPhone Notes in bed. I’m tired. And I am lucky–I am in a safe, loving home, and so far, have not had to experience firsthand the traumas of 2020, save for heightened anxiety. I know this is not the case for so many of you. 

I do believe, of course, that we will get through. But I want to acknowledge the pain that so many of you have felt this year and are feeling now. I want to make that clear to whomever is reading this in the Weather Vane archives fifty years from now.

So. This one goes out to everyone staring at your laptop screens at 4 a.m., praying for your brain to come up with just one more paragraph. To those who cannot see your loved ones because you don’t want to endanger them. To those who have lost someone. To those affected everyday by the horrific racism in our country. To those who are feeling lost, or afraid, or sad, or angry, or just tired.

I hope that The Weather Vane has made you feel heard this semester. We have tried to do our due diligence, but there is always so much more to be done. And I hope I have done some good in this position this past year and a half. It has been a pleasure to serve.

I’ll leave you with this excerpt from a poem by Andrea Gibson, because it has been rattling around in my head since I heard it a few weeks ago. I hope you’ll take it with you too. Have grace and have hope for the new year—we are each other’s foundations.

“When the water left the city I went back,

drove through the 9th Ward to a church

that had been gutted by the storm.

The preacher had spray-painted his phone number

across the length of the falling building.

There was something about his phone number

being as tall as the door––I couldn’t stop crying.

The world falls apart and people

become foundation.”