One Year In

Here we are one year in from the date the World Health Organization officially declared the pandemic. I had a few more frantic days after the declaration in the office before it shut down as well, and Zoom life began in earnest. With the ramp up of vaccines there is a feeling of light at the end of the tunnel. Only the side-by-side articles that report on vaccinations remind that variants are rampant and that the vaccine rollout exclusively in wealthy nations is not a global solution to a global problem. That said, I’m trying to not allow the more morose thoughts overshadow the strand of light pulling me out of the longest winter I’ve ever experienced.

Temperatures in Cambridge tipped into the 60s today, and I felt like weeping with relief. I have never loved winter, but this year I’ve felt immobilized by it. Because this year the snow and freezing temperatures spelled the end to the limited socializing that was available in warmer months. In the spring, summer, and fall, my husband and met up in parks with friends for social distanced gatherings regularly. We stretched this all the way into December—meeting up for an outdoor meal with a friend with our sleeping bags, warmest down coats, and layers of clothes and hot water bottles at the ready. But when winter set in in earnest, with snow and ice coating the ground and bone deep wind chill, it felt there was really nothing left to do but hunker down. So hunker we did.

At some point in the last month I needed to find a specific date on my 2019 calendar. As I scrolled back through the months of my pre-pandemic life, I had the sensation of reading my childhood diaries: a life both familiar and quite foreign all at the same time. I used to have the problem of doing too much—overcommitting—or so I was told. Only, I’m not sure now it was a problem, maybe it was just the way I am. Maybe it fed me.

I took a bread making class once and the instructor showed us how to knead the dough until the gluten knit together so that when you stretched the dough it would become so thin you could see through it, but it wouldn’t break—a kind of culinary stained glass. The Goldilocks rule applies here—you don’t want to work the dough too much or too little—just the right amount. And in this most recent season of the pandemic, I can safely say, as an extrovert, there have been far too few inputs, and I feel like a withered version of myself. Stretched thin, but not by things I love, rather by a dearth of things I love.

We are all hitting on our particular one-year marks of the pandemic. The first cancelled trip or event. The last day of in-person-classes or going into the office. The first day of having to go into work and feeling like doing so was putting your life into peril. The first death of a loved one. The story lines are all different. And how we’ve moved through this year is varied. Some have chosen to stuff cotton in their ears and ignore guidance from the CDC—others have held themselves to strictest standards. And most of us fall somewhere in-between.

My losses have been nominal in the grand scheme of losses. But they are none-the-less painful: I miss seeing loved ones in person.

I built much of my life and career around assiduously avoiding a screen-based existence. I was a teacher before I was a therapist—and when the school where I taught developed a 1:1 student to i-Pad ratio, I had a true conniption and fired off missives to the administration about how it would be so detrimental to have students constantly engaged in their screens rather than with each other. I was a lone voice of dissent, and the program rolled out. I eventually left the school, and went to one of the rare school programs where students turn over their devices for the entire semester—and live a truly unplugged existence. A similar thing happened after a summer where I worked taking teens on a trip in Costa Rica. As their trip leader, I had to carry a cell phone that their parents had access too. After endless calls with parents who in the end seemed rather ill equipped to let their child out of their grasp, I vowed I’d find a summer job where cell signal couldn’t find me. And for the next seven years I worked summers leading backpacking trips for the National Outdoor Leadership School in the remote Wyoming Rockies, where cell signal was blessedly absent, and students were notably more content.

In any case, more than most of my peers, I’ve made life choices that have often been explicitly guided by keeping technology at bay. Of course, I’ve given in in a thousand ways my early 20s self would cringe at. And the concessions haven’t unilaterally made life worse, as I feared when I had my student i-Pad conniption back in my teaching days. I have a website and a smartphone, and now, of course, over the last 365 days, my entire work life, and much of my social life has moved from three dimensions into two dimensions. And I am genuinely grateful for it. I’m so grateful I’ve been able to keep working and seeing clients over video over this year—and that this medium has allowed for genuine connection. I’m so grateful for the Face-timing with friends and family. Grateful and resentful. All in one bite.

Mostly I’m on my knees grateful for the promise of spring in New England. Even if the world could end in a thousand horrible ways. Even if the variants are out there swirling. Even if, even if… the sunshine today feels like redemption after a long, long year, and the first buds on my neighbor’s tree feel like the gold medal for making it through winter.