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A nurse in a blue hazmat suit and gloves waved me in. I was whisked onto a seat in a sterile room covered in plastic sheets that had been secured with blue painter’s tape. The kind of place where a tidy serial killer would entertain.
As Steven Wright says, “If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving is definitely not for you.”
I thought about the New York Times writer Arthur Brooks, who said, “America is being ripped apart by bitterness and contempt, fomented by public bullies and self-interested leaders—but we can fight back to reunite the nation around principles of respect, kindness, and dignity.” Perhaps we had become a nation of contempt.
Something happens to one’s creative libido when forced into a cage of infinite time. And you’re left in a discontented and unfulfilled state, except when melting marshmallows with a fork over the stove. But that’s an entirely different proposition: that’s pure survival.
There’s a saying, “If you want something done, ask a busy person,” which has always resonated with me. If I have a blank calendar one day, the idea of gassing up the car is overwhelming. But if I have a packed day of meetings, dentist appointment, school conference, and scripts due, I can not only gas up my car, but gas up the state of New York.
I can accomplish Herculean things if I’m going at high speed. So in the pandemic, when everything screeched to a halt, so did I. At the beginning of Covid-19, I was spinning. I drove over the speed limit to Costco to load up on chicken nuggets and bottled water. I worked with other women in my community on a fund to help underserved famili...
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“Life is a gift; wake up every day and realize that.” I know, I know. But there’s a reason we all gravitate toward quote-of-the-day calendars, Aristotle, and the film Billy Elliot! Without aspiration, we don’t have the ability to seek out the best versions of ourselves.
Solitude is essential to one’s mental stability. So suddenly things stop. And we are in lockdown. And we mammals have to downshift into hibernation mode. Except there’s one problem—we won’t be asleep for six months like the bears. We will be hibernating and wide awake. And for more than six months, as it turns out.
My daughters will always have a surrogate older brother. Kyle will cry at their graduations and tease them about the frivolity of their Sephora purchases. And I will always have a friend, a comrade, who got me through one of the hardest and scariest times in my life. You never know where the angels are until they present themselves.
You can blame it on age (and all that Mary Oliver poetry I read on Instagram), but the pandemic caused me to reevaluate my social existence. I found I lost the appetite for chitchat. It’s not snobbery. I don’t feel more or less than, it’s just a matter of how I want to spend my energy. It’s a connection to empathy, kindness, depth, and a wider sense of altruism. And in its most base form—in with the good, out with the bad. And by “bad,” I mean assholes.
But for this one particular ex-love, the pandemic magnified how lost he was to me. One afternoon toward the end of my recovery, I noticed an unfamiliar email address in my inbox. It was him. There was only one line on the email: Are you dead? he asked. Yes! I replied. And that was the only and last time I heard from him. Yet that exchange brought me immense comfort . . . He hadn’t changed a bit.
The irony was, those ten days ended up offering a therapeutic respite from all our anxieties and fears. And my daughter and I were able to process them together. What if she didn’t make any friends? What if she hated college? What if I didn’t like any of her friends? What if I loved college? We played out every scenario. For ten days. And when the day came and quarantine was lifted and the car was packed, there was a sense of calm. We didn’t have to armor ourselves from feelings by filling our time with frivolous errands.
Fourteen is a very young age to venture out into the world. I like to say that boarding school was my Orange Is the New Black. It was all about survival. I started smoking (Kools) to fit in and fly under the social scrutiny radar. Every day was about making it through to lights-out. I don’t recall European history debates or a riveting paper on The Scarlet Letter. My greatest education came from experiences, not textbooks.
Even though we, as humans, are most secure in a tribe, there is so much to learn from other tribes, and that is how we expand our minds.
Lean into the discomfort. You are growing and expanding, which can feel thorny and graceless, but I promise the muscles you can’t see are strengthening. Contentment doesn’t make you grow; discomfort does.
I will always feel like the child no matter the circumstances, but there’s something satisfying in giving a little bit of wisdom back. I quote Rita Mae Brown to my mother: “Dying’s not so bad. At least [you] won’t have to answer the telephone.”
My mother can curtsy before the Queen of England in a Givenchy suit and feathered hat as easily as dig holes for tomato plants in her garden in rural Maine. I have revered her all my life. I’ve always wanted to be her when I grew up. And now I’ve grown up. And she’s eighty-six years old.
To my spectacular, maturing mother, I offer you this: Walk. Move your body. You need blood flow and muscle, or you won’t be able to get to the post office or pick blueberries.
Hold on to your women friends. As long as you can. Because one day they’re all dead. (You actually told me this; I’m recycling it.) It is your women friends who hold the oral history of your life.
I will hold on to all the judiciousness of my mother and be grateful for my daughters, who will cradle me. I hope when my children find themselves straddling the fence of caring for their children and for me, they will build upon the foundation my mother and I have provided. And that they will pass the blueprint on to their children.
My stepfather died during Covid. Not from the virus itself. In his sleep and quite blissfully. Louis was ninety-nine years old. My mother pleaded for him to hold on till one hundred, but he decided that was too many candles. And he was ready.
We had all safely gathered at the small church. Some from out west, some from down east, some from nearby, with our tears and admiration for Louis as well as masks, Covid protocols, and pandemic fears. After almost two years of separation. Each of us carrying the remains of the distress and oppression of that time.
I want to believe in wondrous things again. Perhaps we’ve been so beaten down by the global pandemic, raging partisan politics, and the realization of what we’ve done to the planet that the light at the end of the tunnel has dimmed. But I miss guileless joy and fantasy. I want to keep making gingerbread houses and catching fireflies in mason jars and making homemade love cards.
It was still warm out, and the trees were just beginning the transformation to fiery oranges and reds. A few leaves had fallen on the grass. I thought about hot apple cider. And the fact that even if I was alone, I was going to carve pumpkins this year. And buy bulk candy with the mini boxes of Milk Duds.
When I returned home after the funeral I was hit with a bout of insomnia. Usually, when I’m hit with an unquiet mind I read a book or rewatch a Nancy Meyers film.
