Susan Writes

Quinn was upset.  As six-year-old girls can be, she was a bit hysterical.  Crying.  Wailing.  Lying on the floor.  Quinn’s mother checked her daughter quickly, determined she wasn’t injured, and hugged her.  “Are you sad or mad?” the mom asked.

            Between sobs, Quinn said, “I’m smad.”  She sniffed, then said, “I’m sad and mad.”  Quinn was unhappy and angry.  When her grandmother shared this story, Quinn’s reason for being upset wasn’t remembered.  That a young child could describe her feelings was remembered. 

            Smad.  What perfect word.  Sad and mad tangled and meshed together.  A big snarly mess.  Right now, I’m smad about several happening going on in world. 

            Recent natural disasters have been devastating. In Haiti, over 2, 200 people died, about 300 are still missing, and 53,000 homes were destroyed by an earthquake.  A flood in Waverly, just 160 miles west of Cookeville, took twenty people’s lives and destroyed 270 homes.  Devastation caused by Hurricane Ida is still being evaluated. Did these disasters bring memories of the tornado that struck here in March, 2020? 

            The news from Afganistan is heart-breaking.  Senseless deaths and violence.  Death always hurts – people loved every person who died and they grieve. 

            After being vaccinated for Covid 19 and family and friends receiving vaccines, I had hoped that this virus would lose its grip on our daily lives.  Now, the delta variant is on a rampage and while the vaccine should prevent serious illness for me, how I wish my young grandchildren were vaccinated.  I wish everyone were vaccinated and would wear masks.

            One day in 2006, while eating lunch in the teacher lounge with young teacher friends, they talked about Facebook and encouraged me to set up an account.  Since then, I’ve used social media and liked connecting with former students and long-time friends, and I post this column on Facebook. 

            But now I’m smad because I see Facebook posts that are intended to tear down people and/or create conflict.  Those posts are sometimes questions. I’m smad that people write words that hurt and purposely cause disagreements to divide people.

            I could wallow in smadness.  Be sad and mad all day long, every day, but I don’t want to live that way.  My best antidote to smadness is counting blessings – literally numbering and writing blessings in a lined spiral bound notebook.  It’s a morning habit I began several years ago after reading One Thousand Gifts, an inspirational book, by Ann Voskamp. 

            Voskamp was challenged by a friend to list 1000 gifts so she took pencil in hand, and while caring for her five children and doing chores alongside her husband on their working farm, she wrote.  As I write blessings, words of thanksgiving, smadness is pushed aside. 

            When I heard Quinn’s coined word, I knew I’d take it as my own.  It’s okay to be smad.  It’s not okay to stay smad. For me listing joys, even something as simple as a yellow finch snatching seeds from my birdfeeder, helps squelch being smad.

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