A shared act of remembrance

Yesterday afternoon, I listened to a two-hour radio show dedicated to G, the father of my friend A (not her real initial), who died in December after fighting dementia. G loved to play and listen to music, so A’s aunt in Oregon used her weekly public radio show to air a playlist of songs her brother loved: lots of Chet Atkins, an occasional Willie Nelson tune, some Charlie Pride and a delightfully palate-cleansing Frank Yankovic, and a handful of songs from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

It was a moving and joy-filled tribute to a man with many friends, and I woke this morning with “I’ll Fly Away” singing in my head. During the past three pandemic years, we’ve all become accustomed to creative ways to celebrate safe and socially-distanced milestone events, including drive-by birthday parties and too many CardMyYard displays to count.

At the height of pandemic lockdown, J and I attended our first (and so far only) Zoom wedding, a gathering in a Texas hotel ballroom with remote attendees in Pakistan, Qatar, and beyond. It was an event we wouldn’t have attended in any other context, but Zoom literally opened the ceremony to folks like us in far-flung places, giving us a chance to witness an otherwise private family event.

The week after G died, I “attended” his New York memorial service via Zoom, and I was grateful for the opportunity to be there virtually if not in person. Yesterday’s radio show felt similarly–and surprisingly–immediate. Although a radio playlist dedicated to G wasn’t a nod to pandemic protocol–I’m sure his sister would have dedicated a show to him even without a pandemic–the technologies we’ve become so accustomed to these past few years are a perfect way to gather far-flung friends and family in a shared act of remembrance.

Yesterday as I listened to an Oregon radio live stream on my phone here in eastern Massachusetts, I occasionally traded text comments and emoji with A in western Mass as we listened: not quite the same as being in the same room, but a way to share a real-time experience across the miles.

 

When the sun shines

Yesterday local COVID wastewater levels dipped below the threshold J and I have set for indoor dining, so today we had lunch inside the Thai restaurant where we regularly order takeout, this afternoon I got a haircut, and tomorrow we’re planning to go out to lunch again before going to an indoor craft fair.

For the first year or so of the pandemic, J and I faithfully watched COVID case-counts and hospitalization data to determine how much infection was circulating in the community so we could adjust our behavior accordingly. Now that so few people are taking COVID tests, however, case-counts are no longer an accurate gauge of community spread. Wastewater levels are more reliable, as infected people excrete viral particles whether or not take a COVID test: in other words, poop doesn’t lie.

Although every activity involves some level of COVID risk, J and I have learned that we have to take advantage of moments when viral levels are low, as they always rise again. You have to make hay when the sun shines.

 

Alfresco

Exactly one year ago today, J and I walked into O’Hara’s Food & Spirits in Newton Highlands, MA and had lunch at our usual high top table: the first time we’d eaten inside since March 12, 2020. This time last year, J and I were freshly vaccinated, and we hadn’t yet been schooled in the Greek letters of viral nomenclature: first Delta, then Omicron, and now a litany of Omicron sub-variants.

This year, J and I are eating outside again, thanks to the current COVID surge here in the northeast. Over the past year, J and I have mastered a nimble dance, returning to restaurants when case counts are low and relying on takeout and outdoor dining when cases are high.

Right now, the weather is nice enough that eating outside doesn’t feel like a hardship. Plenty of restaurants have tables squeezed along sidewalks or in parking spaces, and it feels almost Parisian to eat outside while both cars and pedestrians stream past.

This weekend, J and I ordered takeout sandwiches from a local pizza place, then we had an impromptu picnic on the Newton Centre green. Families were reading books on blankets, friends were chatting on park benches, and a man was playing jazz standards on a colorfully painted outdoor piano.

I’ve often wondered if today’s children will someday remember the pandemic as “those summers when we ate outside.” Years ago, I saw a man with a dog sitting on a grassy embankment next to a disabled car. The man had his head in his hands, depressed; the dog, on the other hand, lolled on the grass with a doggy grin, clearly enjoying the sights and smells of a sunny day.

There are plenty of things we’ve lost over the past two years, but having a reason to spend more time outside is a welcome consolation.

 

Happy Vaxxiversary!

One year ago today, J and I took a 45-minute drive to Worcester, where we and a couple hundred other people received our first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in a gymnasium at Worcester State University.

Like seemingly everyone else in the spring of 2021, I had horror stories of trying to get the vaccine as soon as J and I were eligible. After trying for days to find an available appointment, I nearly wept with relief when I was able to book two simultaneous appointments for a Friday afternoon in April: a Friday that happened to be Good Friday, a day I immediately dubbed The Best Good Friday Ever.

Receiving the first then second Pfizer dose changed everything. In April 2021 I’d been teaching in-person since September 2020, relying upon nothing more than social distance, a KN95 mask, and my body’s own immunity to keep me safe. Getting the vaccine allowed me to continue teaching without fear of catching the virus, developing complications, and dying.

Although getting vaccinated didn’t end the pandemic–the Delta then Omicron variants dashed our naive hopes of quickly returning to our Old Normal–being able to navigate the world with a strong layer of protection has been life-changing. The vaccine isn’t a silver bullet: plenty of people have caught COVID (especially the Omicron variant) despite being fully vaccinated. But for those of us who are up-to-date with our shots, COVID is no longer a death sentence. I can’t overestimate how grateful I am for that.

Back in October, exactly six months after our second shot, J and I got boosted. And next week, just shy of six months after our booster, J and I have appointments for our fourth dose–a jab I’m calling our re-booster–at the pharmacy where I get my flu shot every year. If our New Normal means getting a COVID shot every six months or so, I’ll be the first in line.

 

I might survive

There comes a time every not-quite-spring when I feel a surge of almost certainty: a feeling that says if I’ve survived winter this long, I just might survive the rest.

This feeling typically comes on a day like today when the sun is mostly out, there are still impassable stretches of ice underfoot, and the forecast calls for snow. It’s not over, the forecast says…but it will be over eventually, my soul whispers.

This year the pandemic feels like another interminable winter. We know we aren’t out of the woods yet, but… Even as the weather forecast calls for snow, we look at the calendar and the lengthening days and repeat our February mantra, “Every day without snow is a day closer to No More Snow.”

Right now, every day without a positive COVID diagnosis feels like a day closer to Lots Less COVID. (Four weeks into my fourth semester of in-person pandemic teaching, I still say the best day of the week is whatever day my negative PCR test results come back.)

We know that COVID, like New England snowstorms, isn’t going away for good…but the thing that gets us through another long winter is the knowledge that it won’t always be this way. Someday, eventually, we’ll wear sandals and short-sleeves again, and someday, eventually, we’ll return to dining outside or in and mingling with or without masks.

I can learn to weather COVID surges, going to ground when cases are high and venturing out when cases decline. I can learn to weather a threat that is cyclic if not seasonable, our lives divided into social time and stay-at-home times.

On days like today, I can feel it in my bones: we just might survive.

 

Back to boundaries

This is the third week of the semester, but it’s the first week I’ve taught entirely in-person.

Both Babson and Framingham State started the Spring semester remotely, giving students time to get booster shots and take on-campus COVID tests. Babson returned to in-person instruction last week, and this week I finally met my Framingham State students face-to-face.

It’s strange to meet students in-person after you’ve already read their first assignments: the opposite of how it usually happens. The names and words on the screen now have flesh-and-blood personalities attached, and in my Tuesday classes we did an icebreaker activity I often do on the first day of class, not the third week of the term.

Omicron or no, I’m ready to be back in-person. Last Thursday, I taught my final (scheduled) Zoom classes from my desk in my bedroom while workmen in the basement clanged and rattled, tearing out a leaky oil tank and replacing it with a shiny new one. As Roxy paced and whined, upset that Strangers Were in the House Doing Things, I lectured to my screen and tried to maintain some semblance of professionalism despite the domestic chaos in the background.

After two years of intermittent work-from-home, I’m ready for boundaries again: let home happen at home and work happen at work. When I’m teaching or holding office hours on campus, I’m not worrying about walking the dog, folding the laundry, or unloading the dishwasher. Although I still grade papers, answer emails, and prep classes at home, I’ve had my fill of real-time remote classes. I’m ready to kick students out of my bedroom and back into the classroom where they belong.

 

Lines for another COVID semester

Spring semester starts tomorrow at both of the colleges where I teach. Tomorrow I’ll teach my Framingham State classes from my desk at home, and on Wednesday I’ll teach my Babson classes from my office on campus, followed by my first COVID test of the semester.

I’m so accustomed to pandemic-related modality shifts, I didn’t bat an eye when FSU then Babson announced the first week of the in-person semester would be remote to give returning students and faculty time to get tested before returning to the classroom. I had a similar lack of response when FSU announced we’d actually spend the first two weeks of the semester remote. At this point of the pandemic, I have practice with nearly any modality: been there, done that.

At this point of the pandemic, teaching college feels like some sort of Green Eggs and Ham-style nursery rhyme:

I can teach standing in class
Or sitting at my desk on my ass.
I can teach in a room
Or I can teach in a Zoom.
Students can Webex from home
Or from wherever they roam.
I can teach from home when I’m sick
Or when the snow and ice are too thick.
I’ll teach however we need to stop the spread.
I’ll teach however you’d like, as long as I’m not dead.

 

Recollected in tranquility

Back in November, when J and I were newly boosted and the daily number of new COVID cases in Massachusetts was low, J and I went to the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, briefly roaming the grounds before heading inside to see the colorful fringe towers at the heart of Jeffrey Gibson’s INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE.

November’s trip to the DeCordova was in part a purification ritual. The last time J and I had gone to the DeCordova was January 6, 2021: a pandemic-appropriate birthday celebration, where we wore masks to wander the grounds before the day turned strange.

Among the many things I missed during the height of COVID lockdown, wandering museums was near the top of the list. After we learned how to Zoom with friends, order grab-and-go takeout from our favorite restaurants, and schedule curbside pickup from our favorite stores, we were still denied the joys of museum bathing: something I enjoy so much, for years I’ve kept a tradition of going to a museum on or around my birthday.

Wandering the DeCordova grounds in January 2021 and going inside the museum in November 2021 was a step toward reclaiming an activity I enjoyed in the Before Times. I love the reverent attentiveness of museums. While the Zen Center is still shuttered, museums are the closest thing I have to an indoor sacred space outside my own home.

This year on my birthday, J and I stayed home. Thanks to the Omicron variant, COVID cases are surging here, and we’ve spent my winter break hunkering at home, retreating from the risk of infection. Once the semester begins, my retreat will end; for now, I’m enjoying the tranquility of a self-imposed stay-at-home order.

In the early days of the pandemic, it sometimes felt like we’d never return to our once-cherished activities. In the first days of the Vaccinated Times, it felt like life was returning to normal, but Delta then Omicron complicated matters.

I’m now realizing that life in the age of COVID will be a hybrid entity: in some ways like the Before Times, and in other ways not. We talk of “the pandemic” as if it were a monolithic thing, constant and consistent from one week to the next, when in actuality, the pandemic has its own seasons and cycles.

J and I aren’t currently going to museums even though they are open…but we know we will return, eventually. Case counts will surge, case counts will fall: sickness will come and go in waves, and we’ll learn to surf those changes, venturing out when it’s safe and going to ground when it’s not.

William Wordsworth said that poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility,” and as I look at the photos I took at the DeCordova last January and again last November, I experience a kind of vicarious thrill. During the reclusive moments of a pandemic, we sustain our spirits with the memory of past adventures recollected in tranquility.

 

A certain kind of solitude

Two years ago, on January 5, 2020, I celebrated the day before my birthday by going to the Cambridge Zen Center, sitting one meditation session, then walking from Central to Harvard Square, where I sipped hot chocolate and wrote in my journal at Burdick’s Cafe.

We all have spent countless hours ruminating on the Before Times: the simple pleasures we took for granted before the pandemic changed our lives in profound and unpredictable ways. There are many things I miss from the Before Times, but this one will probably surprise you: I miss a certain kind of solitude.

Over the past two years, most of us have gotten more than our fill of remote, socially distanced, work-from-home solitude: the kind of isolation that comes from not going out, not seeing friends and family, not hanging around the office water cooler. But I miss the quiet anonymity of sitting alone in a crowded cafe, strangers buzzing amiably around me.

For the past two years, we’ve spent a lot of time alone together in the separate squares of Zoom screens, communicating with friends, family, and coworkers across our individual isolations. What I miss, though, is time spent together alone: time, that is, spent in the presence of strangers without any need to interact.

For the past almost-two years, I’ve gotten good at what I call duck-in interactions. Tonight, for instance, J and I wanted to try takeout from a new restaurant, so I followed the now-familiar drill: order and pay online, show up at the restaurant, scope out the register from outside to make sure there isn’t a line, then duck inside to pick up my order. Even allowing for brief, masked pleasantries, this kind of interaction lasts no more than a minute: duck in, grab food, duck out.

I miss the casual leisure of sitting in a cafe sharing space with strangers without worrying about shared air and exposure times. I miss the days when sitting alongside strangers was a welcome form of communion, not a potential source of contagion.

 

Gone to ground

It’s been almost a month since I taught my last in-person class of the Fall semester, and nearly two weeks since I submitted my final grades. During that time, J and I have been hunkered down at home, riding out the current Omicron surge.

After three full semesters of pandemic teaching, I’m used to the COVID drill. I’m accustomed to teaching in a mask, and my work weeks now revolve around the regular ritual of a PCR test, with results coming via email in a day or two. When you teach during a pandemic, the best day of any week is when your negative COVID test results come back.

Once my on-campus obligations are over, however, the cumulative exhaustion of pandemic teaching sets in. Once I’m no longer navigating a college classroom, I realize how much energy it takes to be ever-vigilant, constantly monitoring my own and my students’ symptoms: was that cough just allergies or something more troubling?

Over the holidays, while other folks flocked to airports, family gatherings, and social events, all I’ve wanted to do is stay home, retreating into myself like a rabbit gone to ground. Outside, the virus is running rampant; inside, I recharge and refuel, craving hibernation more than social interaction.

A few days before New Year’s Eve, I heard yet another NPR interview with an infectious disease expert answering questions about What Is or Isn’t Safe over the holidays. After another semester of wondering what is or isn’t safe every second I’m on campus, all I want for Christmas, New Year’s, and the next few weeks is a break from non-stop vigilance. Here’s hoping the Omicron wave has crested before classes resume later this month.