Anniversary of Lockdown and Holding on To Me
I see a big screen ahead of me with a bucket of popcorn in my lap, wearing shoes that require transportation, lingering carelessly at a coffee shop, going out with friends without preface, or having people in my home, being with my sons whenever and wherever we please, traveling to new places and old, and doing it all with good lashes. What has been a year of suspended space, is now ending like a time lapse of the sun rising across the United States. Surprisingly, immunizations are outpacing my reentry preparations. It’s all clashing now when set against the patience and lack of pace to which we’ve had to grow accustomed.
As I write, a capsule of time is closing up and waiting to be buried. It is the day before the one-year anniversary of the day the world closed up for us in New York, on March 13, 2020. The events of that time so horrific that I don’t think I even took note then that it was a Friday the 13th. I remember the big news had been what was taking place in Italy. This Novel Coronavirus was rampant; there was chaos in their hospitals as front-line workers had to make grim lottery-choices on who lived and died. The charm of neighbors keeping it together the only way they could, by singing together on social-distanced balconies, brought us to tears. I thought, those poor Italians with their lovely disregard for efficiency and structure are paying a heavy price for their slow, easy living. That wouldn’t happen here. And then with shocking speed, the virus was on our shores and New York was under water. There was no American ingenuity and power to save us. Listening to Donald Trump’s press conference on March 11th I took the news into my own hands and purchased a few N-95 masks online, already selling at inflated prices.
I thought I was probably being reactionary and neurotic. Even so, at the same time with pseudo-adult optimism, I minimized the truth and reality, because isn’t that what we all do when the facts are too much to bear? I, again, underestimated how low Donald Trump would go. A small part of me thought that this chilling virus might be Trump’s Ground Zero. Instead, this madman did not care enough to bring order to the chaos. The virus spread as fast as the name mutated from Corona, to the more onerous-sounding Covid-19. And what I want to say next — thank God for Governor Mario Cuomo — is another heartbreaking-blow of the last year.
In the early days in New York we were warned that because hospitals were so backed up, if you had cardiac arrest and called an ambulance it was up to the paramedics to save you. They had been instructed not to bring those cases to the hospitals. As death permeated the air like virus droplets, Cuomo became our protector. His mix of old-school father, and alluring, woke, renaissance man gave us reassurance. Everyday we set our clocks to Cuomo’s 11:00 am news conferences where he developed a plan based on science, rose above partisanship, used common-sense, spoke of love and displayed real empathy as 1,000 people a day died. He used that New York pride to keep us strong, and told us to look out for each other. I reasoned that I was in the best place I could be because Cuomo would contain and control this pandemic. Here, at the first-rate hospitals, doctors would find new treatments as they fought on the front lines. New York Strong would give us better odds if we wound up in the hospital.
Going back a couple days to my final days of freedom, on March 10th I went to the Guggenheim with a friend to see the Rem Koolhaas exhibit and didn’t have enough time to take it all in. I planned to go back shortly to fully saturate myself in this unique museum experience. Of course that wouldn’t happen, as emblems of the city’s heartbeat began shutting down. We went from the exhibit to the meditation class he was teaching and I remember him asking me if I was okay taking the subway. It had already been a week since I had decided to no longer use the germ-spreading confinement of mass-transportation. We took the subway and I was comfortable doing it just this one time. Who knew this would be the beginning of a complete, internal dive into boundaries, reflecting on everything from fast fashion to potentially life and death choices. I’m 61 and I’ve had cancer. Because the stakes for me were higher, I surprised myself a few times when I didn’t stick to my pre-determined Covid-boundaries, playing instead with instant gratification. It was like a vapor of denial would blanket time spans of still and vacant, and seep into that moment when I wanted to live fully. These choices were made in blank space.
A week ago I received my first vaccine dose. I sit today exceptionally excited, and in the center of all of the unimaginables moving out like a spoke, not in linear form. There is the old-normal, difficult now to sync and feel the memory of how things were. Then, the new-normal of the past year, in some ways a numbed-down spirit of fringe-being that isn’t grounded to feel. And now…the what…enhanced-normal to come? Difficult to nail down this feeling too, requiring the context of the old normal, too fuzzy to use as a reference point.
I do know that re-experiencing the beautiful things in life will be more like a first time, than an old time. I have a twinge of fear about expectations, because the lack of deadlines has been incredibly freeing and I’m out of practice with being on the go. I want to keep more alone time, without adding in self-reproach for needing it like I would have before. I’m uneasy that I’ll throw away my new sustainability commitments, and justice and political activism. I have an abundance of reverence for this extraordinary last year. Please let me remember the loneliness, through minding my relationships; the scarcity of culture and beauty through more experiences; and the hardship of so many through giving back. And most important of all let me never forget to honor and celebrate that I lived! So many did not.
The anniversary of lockdown would be depressed, stagnant and one-note if getting vaccinated was still a distant hope. The massive vaccine rollout at the exact one-year mark is the reason for all of these colliding thoughts. I find quiet and comfort from frenetic headspace by being present and staying in the moment. Isn’t that one of the grounding lessons I’ve learned in this challenging time? And, oh…how much I missed lash extensions?
