It’s really nice to see you. You are the dawn after what feels like an endless night, providing promise and hope.
While the Queen of England might have had a personal annus horribilis in 1992 with a devastating fire at Windsor Castle and the end of the marriage for three out of her four children playing out like a torrid soap opera for the world to watch, I think the world has had a collective annus horribilis this year- all brought on by a simple word-Covid!
Or did it?
Two thousand and twenty definitely had its valleys, but there were peaks along the way: communities of people coming together to make music from their balconies, windows, and backyards, to make noise to rally around our tired heroes, to record songs alone which were later joined together to lift spirits, to collect canned goods and non-perishables for food pantries, to sew masks, to feed First Responders and save restaurants, to name but a few. And it’s the view from those mountaintops that I will take with me into the new year.
But while I am ending this year on a high note (or as high of a note that is possible), I had many ups and downs along the way that we can all relate to….and I hope to laugh about… because in the grand scheme of things, they are simply a nuisance on our journey onward and upward.
New Year/New Me 2020
I looked at 2020 as a time of new beginnings- a new decade; a new chapter in my life. I, who never make New Year’s resolutions, decided that 2020 was my fresh start. My New Year’s resolution was to wear bold lipstick. (Sorry if that revelation was a bit of a letdown). Having been a founding member of the nude lip club, I always marveled at how some women can pull off a bold lip. I decided to step out of my comfort zone and purchased a deep red (with blue undertones) and a matte magenta pink shade of lipstick. Go big or go home I thought! I was excited. Armed with my chunky NARS lip crayons I was ready to tackle all that 2020 could throw at me. Or so I thought. I wore my lips proud up until the last weekend of freedom- March 7th, 2020. Thereafter, I fell into a pit of despair, in lockdown and at home. Not only did wearing lipstick get tossed to the curb, so did mascara, blush, and jeans. While I showered and shaved daily (small triumphs), my hair grew long and mangled (with a hint of a gray or two) and my eyebrows became bushy. I began to resemble a Neanderthal in sweats. I welcomed this abstention of vanity as the world came to a screeching halt and bigger issues came to the forefront.
Winter
As delineation of time ceased to exist, and one day melted into the next, I began to feel like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog’s Day. At first, it was exciting to be home in our safe cocoon. But then…
We are not First Responders or Front Line Workers. We were and are blessed to have a job and be able to work from home. While in lockdown, we no longer needed to commute to the city on mass transit or frantically scramble to get to school on time. As the Pandemic dawned, our mornings seemed downright civil as everyone moseyed on up to their computers to log on for the day. It felt like we were on Island time. Things got done when they got done at a calm and peaceful place. In our house, we started the day with the pledge of allegiance, the National Anthem, and then a patriotic song after a hearty breakfast. (I needed structure and comfort, and reverted to my childhood school routine.) This lasted but a handful of weeks and slowly devolved into a day that would never end. Gone were the cheerful, unrushed mornings. Alarm clocks would be set to only be snoozed indefinitely. Getting on to the computer to start school/work became frenzied and stressed. Our days became endless meals, cleaning up said meals, zoom calls, checking off Google Classroom assignments, shopping for food and necessities, cleaning all food and necessities before putting them away, cleaning the house, and then starting over. We were the lucky ones with shelter, food, an income, and health. Family members became ill, some made it through, others we lost. And while I have never looked forward to a wake or funeral, I finally understood the beauty in them and the closure they provide.
Spring
Our days began to feel like we lived with Laura Ingles on the Prairie. Our first thought in the morning was what are we eating today for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Do we have the ingredients? Someone on Facebook saw toilet paper at Walgreens three towns over 15 minutes ago- I need to run there and get a roll. Clorox and Lysol become the Holy Grail. I signed up for Instacart after physically going to the supermarket only to be met with empty shelves everywhere. That’s when fear crept in, and to allay my anxiety I buried my held in the sand and had someone else do my shopping. But I couldn’t get a time slot. Then my husband decided I was doing something wrong and scored us a reservation on his first try. It was dumb luck. In the chaos that was homeschool at week 7, I almost killed my husband when the doorbell rang and his grocery order arrived. I hadn’t realized he placed an order. He wanted to surprise me. Having to stop helping my son with his work, I painstakingly cleaned all of the groceries: Scallops, truffles, blue cheese, brie, beets, and mesclun salad to name a few. Food that was clearly only meant for my husband. My blood boiled.
And if things couldn’t be more hectic, our kitchen sink overflowed about every other week. We had a tsunami of water under our sink. Our rags couldn’t be washed and dried fast enough, and all of the supplies that we kept under the sink were ruined. We couldn’t call a plumber and our brand new snake drain broke on its first attempt to help us, Drano beached our new kitchen towels that were used in desperation as the rags had run out, and now dirty dishes had nowhere to be cleaned. This happened multiple times during the Spring and Summer. I wanted to pull out my hair one by one; the gray ones and the brown ones.
But these long, dark days gave way to gratefulness for what we had- time together, food and shelter. My husband and I began to resemble monkeys picking gnats from each other’s heads as I attempted to cut his hair, and he dyed mine. We curled up and binge-watched the train wreck that was Tiger King on Netflix, and I relearned to teach math to my children by journaling about it. Who knew there were so many ways to arrive at the same answer? I certainly didn’t until the lockdown, and moreover, I didn’t know math had feelings and needed a journal.
And just when I thought we would make it out of lockdown unscathed, my children’s birthdays were on the horizon. What to do? The mood at home became dreary. We all missed physical contact and interaction outside of our family of four. We missed our family and friends.
A lonely birthday would just underscore that fact. Thankfully, we were brought back to life and our blessings by the Birthday drive-by for our children and others. We looked forward to piling into our car with painted signs and balloons to honk and cheer the birthday boy or girl, and we lit up like a tree at Christmas when It was our own turn and friends and family lined up by the dozens to hoot and holler the passing of another year. Written notes and video messages brought tears to our eyes and gave an invisible hug to our souls.
Summer
As we began to slowly emerge from our lockdown stupor, we still proceeded with caution. We cancelled all camps and group activities. We escaped to a vacation house in the mountains, where the hills were alive and seemed untouched by the “C” word. As luck would have it, our idyllic escape haunted us for weeks on end as our son came down with food poisoning. His gut was in shambles for almost 2 months. The summer heat, extended road trips and any sort of staycation was plagued by his stomach pain and illness. Vomiting and diarrhea became so common that a day without one or both felt like winning the Mega Millions Lottery.
For a brief moment, I thought that we left the illness behind when we ventured to Maine for a few days. The five hour car ride up the eastern seaboard to Maine was exhausting as our son not only suffered from a weakened gut due to the food poisoning, but also car sickness. We barely survived the car ride and felt like we put everything behind us when we arrived at the crisp Atlantic Ocean and dense sand beaches of Maine. Alas, our idyllic frolic on the beach and burying the kids in the sand backfired. SAND WORMS! My children screamed in terror and fought to get into the shower first to wash away the tiny writhing creatures that seemed to find their way into every orifice my children possessed. Our children’s piercing shrills seemed to echo the world’s collective scream “Is it over yet?”. Arriving home from Maine more exhausted and deflated than when we arrived, yep, you guessed it, our sink overflowed at least 3 times more. It felt like the longest summer.
Fall
We just wanted to get the kids to school…. It felt like we could see the finish line but couldn’t seem to ever arrive. School started and anxieties flared. Panic attacks and missed mornings became the norm. Schools all around us were seeing cases of Covid but our school had zero cases. We seemed to have survived all of it as October approached, and then, despite all of our care and preparation, our family was stricken with Covid, and we marred our school’s record. One by one we fell. I was bedridden for almost 2 weeks with intense body pain and headaches, chills, fever, nausea, and vomiting. Our children, thankfully, were asymptomatic. We were most grateful that we didn’t spread it to any of our family and neighbors. It was our family and neighbors who rallied to our sides, preparing meals, texting, dropping off messages of hope and prayers (and cupcakes) that propelled us to the peak. We felt surrounded by love and felt it so deeply. I can truly cry thinking about the love and care we received from our family and friends during that time. It reminds me of the moment from Love Actually when you hear Hugh Grant’s voice over a montage of airport footage at the beginning of the movie saying, “When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”
And that my friends is the recurring lesson of life. If you live long enough, you will be hit in the head with this truth a few times … love is all around. Every few years, every person will hit rock bottom, whether from things within or outside of their control. And in the darkness of the valley, you will see the light, the path of love that will lift you to the peaks, IF you only lookup. You can’t shelter from the darkness. You must continue to move onward and upward. Hopefully, you will take a moment to find the laughter in the darkness and the love lighting the way.
New Year 2021
This brings us full circle. My resolution for 2021 – not only to look for love all around us but to look for the love within.
May you have a happy and healthy new year, filled with blessings, laughter, light, and love. Thank you 2020 for making Hugh Grant’s character an honest man. Hello, 2021. Do you think you can top that?
