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Until recently if you asked me how the pandemic changed my life I’d have said that fortunately I was insulated against its worst effects and it didn’t change my life much. I would have been wrong. I just couldn’t see it. What opened my eyes? I went to synagogue in person for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic and when the Torah was taken out of the ark, I cried. I had not been in the presence of the Torah for more than two years. I am someone who would not describe herself as religious (spiritual, but not religious), who does not believe in the monotheistic Judaic god-figure, and who was attending a service at a congregation where I didn’t know anyone. It made me mindful. I had a long think about the last couple of years.
Why did I imagine the pandemic had not changed my life that much? To begin with, like many writers, I tend to be reclusive. I’m easily exhausted by social events. I often leave gatherings early or bow out altogether. These days I feel increasingly uncomfortable in large groups, preferring the small dinner party or nature walk with one or two friends, where I can follow a conversation better since I have poor hearing. I had no problem staying home; no problem conversing with people on screenchat with subtitles so that I could understand what they were saying better than in person. I went out maybe once a week to buy food and pick up books at the library (left in front in a paper bag with my name on it). With my reliance on lip-reading, I couldn’t communicate with people in masks and therefore avoided contact outside my home more than most. I missed the gym, but I developed a workout to do at home. I had been working from home for 20 years so my work life did not change. Living in liberal America, everyone I knew wore masks, used hand sanitizer, was super careful, and then got vaccinated as soon as they could when that became available. I didn’t know anyone who had contracted the disease, let alone been hospitalized or died of it.
Over time that changed. All of my children and grandchildren have had it by now. Most of my closest relatives have had it. Many friends have had it, despite vaccinations and following guidelines for being careful. Some have had it more than once. I have still not had the disease, but I expect to get it eventually.
As the Torah reading proceeded at services last Saturday, I reflected on my life before the pandemic and my life now. How could I possibly have thought not much had changed? After 43 years of living in and loving California, I bailed and moved to Oregon. Duh – change. I have more than the pandemic to owe for that move but the pandemic certainly turned the tide. I was looking for a better living situation for us to age in place, better medical care with more options, more resources for seniors, smaller house and yard to manage. I was looking for a place not as heavily impacted by global warming. In California, we lived in an area burning up and drought ravaged. We spent half the year on evacuation warning. For six months out of the year I drove around with my photo albums and handmade quilts in the car in case I had to run for it. My gardens barely breathed under water rationing. We often had bad air from nearby conflagrations. Then the pandemic hit, and I saw my new (second) grandson once right after he was born then not again for seven months. When he was seven months old, I saw him for a few days and then didn’t see him again until he was nearly a year (except on the computer screen). I missed the entire first year of his life and will never get it back. After that we agreed on the move. We simply had to live close to the grandchildren if we wanted to have them in our lives, if we wanted to be a part of their childhood and enjoy watching them grow up at close range. The logistics of making that happen were, of course, extremely complicated and stressful. Glad that’s behind us. But I wonder how long it would have taken us to actually do it, to make the move, if not for the pandemic. The separation from our grandchildren it caused galvanized us into action.
I remember well our arrival in Portland when we went to see the baby at seven months during the first year of the pandemic. We drove, stopping only to use a few rest areas along the way while wearing gloves and facemasks and dousing ourselves in sanitizer. We arrived in the evening to find our Zev (just turned three) playing in the front yard with his mom. He had only seen us on screenchat for seven months. We got out of the car and walked over to him. He asked us, “How did you come to Earth?” Who knows what goes on in the mind of a three-year-old? Perhaps he wondered how we got out of the computer.
Beyond the move to the Pacific NW, the pandemic changed my life in many other ways as well. My book group dissolved. I joined a movie group on zoom and it still meets. My father and brothers and I began a weekly family zoom that has resulted in stronger connections for all of us. Given that my father is 93, the weekly zoom matters a great deal. I also zoom regularly with a group of my women cousins and we have become closer and more in touch with one another’s daily lives. I have a weekly screenchat with one of my closest women friends; a time we hold sacred and a weekly conversation that helps keep us sane in these difficult times. Ironically, the social distancing of the pandemic brought me closer to friends and family and increased rather than decreased the time I spend with many members of my inner circle.
Deep psychological effects of the pandemic crept up on me, impacts
that I did not recognize, admit, or understand for quite some time. I find
these hard to tease apart from the damage to my soul caused by the sad state of
the world. How much is pandemic blues and how much is Jan. 6 disgust, Supreme
Court grief, mass shooting trauma, institutionalized racism rage, anti-Semitism
fear, environmental destruction despair, and on and on? Sadly, I have lost a
lot of my creativity. My imagination feels blunted, often paralyzed. This
happened slowly like the proverbial lobster in the stew pot. Somewhere at
parboil I stopped believing that anything I write will make a difference. I
gave up on creative writing and quit caring that I have entire books that I have
written that have not been published and few people have read. What’s the point
when human life will soon vanish and no trace of us remain? On what day did I abandon
my calling, one of my greatest delights? In what hour did I lose faith?
Lately I notice more and more features of pre-pandemic life re-emerging. Fewer people wear masks. More people will unmask so that I can read their lips and understand them. Events are starting to take place again, often outdoors, nevertheless happening. I have invited a few people over for dinner. I have gone to the home of new friends for a meal. I still wear a mask at the store, the gym, the library; but the world is tentatively opening up again, poking its head out from the shell and feeling the sunshine on its face. As the return unfolds, I find myself poking my head out in an entirely new place with different people, landscape, air, water, light. It’s quite an adjustment. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m no longer a Californian, a definition of myself that I was attached to and loved for a long time. My morning walk has changed dramatically. Where I once walked a path among desiccated grasses surrounded by stands of thirsty oak trees on the edge of a dried-up lake, now I walk in a damp maple and fern semi-rainforest. Where am I? Where did I come to Earth? Where has everybody come to Earth? I call it “the return,” but truly there is no return, only forward motion into the ever-unknown. I want some things back. I miss California oak trees. I miss creative writing. I miss faith.
