Reawakening

After over a year in physical isolation, I am beginning to emerge. It is a strange transition, I am never quite sure when to wear my mask. As foreign as it still feels, I am reluctant to let it go too quickly. Different rules apply in different places. I went to meet several members of a board I’m involved with in a new location. On the door it gave clear directions, cutting through the confusion.  Vaccinated people do not need to wear masks. We happily took ours off and it was the first time in over a year that I saw their faces unmasked without a screen between us. Momentarily, I felt rather daring, then it quickly felt normal.

I've begun to meet weekly in person with a close friend as I record her story. It is quite a compelling one. She is a survivor of the Holocaust, 97 years old. We met each week by phone during Covid and I typed as she recounted. Pre-Covid, we used to go out to lunch each week, but now I pick up lunch and we meet at her home to work on our project.

Memorial Day weekend we met up with my brother-in-law to visit the graves of family members. While one other vaccinated person felt safe to be with unmasked, when we entered a restaurant, I felt flummoxed by masking etiquette. We wore our masks while we got our food, took them off to eat and then what? Do you put it back on when you finish eating?

 

I’ve ventured into grocery stores, still masked, first for a few items, then for a big shopping trip. Over the past year we’ve had groceries delivered and I keep getting messages from Target that my cart misses me, as if I am so starved for connection that I am anthropomorphizing my grocery cart. I’m still shopping for two week stretches out of habit and I have a new appreciation for those delivery people who sustained us over the past year. I celebrated my new-found freedom by getting my favorite foods at Trader Joes (which doesn't deliver) and noticed the slight weight gain that followed. There was a discipline around planning meals that I need to manage to maintain. The same goes for a daily workout. I anticipate schedules getting busier away from home when it becomes harder to fit that workout in. 

It is a reawakening and as I worked with the theme of brokenness and wholeness in the Artists' Lab, I found the echo of my experience in my artwork. As the ice of winter was thawing, my husband and I encountered an area where the ice had cracked and water flowed beneath it. It too felt as if it was reawakening. I had taken a picture of the ice fragments when my husband suggested I film it to capture the movement. I ended up combining a photo, a video and the painting above titled Reawakening, into a short piece that you will find at the bottom of this post.

 

I feel as if I needed this break and yes, I realize a pandemic is a bit of overkill quite literally to make that happen. Let me assure you, it would not be my chosen method of epiphany. But I know that I am a person who likes to be in the middle of things and unless the world stops along with me, I keep going, like a hungry person at an all you can eat buffet.

 

Now the world didn’t really stop. It just allowed me to structure my time from home. I attended writing workshops and a three week course on the Holocaust, lectures on art from London and book talks from as far away as Poland. I presented at conferences and gave genealogy talks on-line. Virtually, I was able to gather descendants from one of my ancestral towns from around the world. I consulted with genealogy clients locally as well as nationally and internationally. I met a new friend who had moved here, introduced through an old friend, and set up regular on-line visits and I connected with old friends who live elsewhere now that Zoom seemed to make reconnecting so much easier. My artists’ lab continued to meet on-line and actually allowed for more engagement with breakout rooms enabling more small group discussions. Nonprofit meetings continued on-line and I managed presentations of my genealogy group to both a local and national audience. In some ways my life got busier and broader in scope, while my physical sphere shrank. 

 

So which world do I prefer? I’m not sure. I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like to spend physical time with friends without the careful precautions the pandemic has required. Sometimes it just seems easier to Zoom. I can picture myself sharing a meal or a walk with friends, but I don’t think all of the nonprofit meetings have to be in person. I am hoping they conclude the same.

 

Now I realize this has been a harder time for my extroverted friends. They have a much more fundamental need for that physical connection. It has also been harder on friends who live alone. Still, living with someone isn’t always such a panacea. As much as I describe myself as an introvert, I live with someone who is even more so. We both got much more in touch with our need for space, even while valuing our connection. We realized that my prior busy schedule had given us both some breathing room. Now we needed to learn to co-exist in the same shared space, often by carving out our own physical turf. Fortunately we also have a studio that provided some additional room.  Our proximity leant itself to working out together at home or walking and our mutual fascination with the politics of our times led to a constant stream of CNN in our home.

 

So I don’t know what the ideal world would look like, but I hope to emerge thoughtfully and incorporate what I’ve learned through this pause. I will be maintaining some of the discipline that I drew on for diet and exercise while allowing friendships and outings to gradually re-enter my world. And I’ll be holding onto the expansion of my world that technology afforded while preserving windows of unscheduled time for the many interests that feed my soul.

Or click on Pulsation of Life to see it full screen

Delight and Surprise

I've written little this year, not for lack of thought, but perhaps because there are so many threads that I've been thinking about. I wade through the tangle of ideas and realize that perhaps the most predominant is that this is a year of unexpected reinvention, some seemingly frivolous, but also significant ways. 

Suddenly we were largely confined to our homes and neighborhoods. My car feels unfamiliar when I get behind the wheel because most of my journeys are on foot. My auto pilot reactions still operate, but my trust in them has dwindled. I have often circled back to my house after departing to make sure I closed the garage door only to find that I have.  It is no longer a familiar ritual.

My initial challenges were figuring out how to get groceries delivered and what to do for an exercise routine with the gym closed.  There have been some byproducts of those challenges. We are eating meals at home with rare takeout on special occasions. That gives me greater control of my diet. No lunches out with friends, more planning about what I purchase.

 

Similarly, my workout routine has changed, but also gotten more consistent. When I roll out of bed and into my yoga pants, it is easier to think about a workout, whether it is a walk, an online class or my recumbent bike on those cold winter days. My husband got me an Apple watch and I find I like the routine that it encourages. I have nicknamed it “the little f***er” because it annoyingly tells me to stand up every hour. I dutifully jump up and do three laps around our kitchen and living room to earn my stand. As someone who can sit at my computer for hours at a time, engrossed in a genealogy project, I find that it actually helps my back to listen to this creature on my wrist.

Now, I am not an exercise junkie. Unlike my husband, I don’t bike the 34 mile roundtrip journey to our studio. I work out because I realize it affects my quality of life and I do a moderate amount each day. Much to my surprise the modifications to how I eat, consistent exercise  and the little f***er’s exhortations have resulted in a steady weight loss. I found myself pulling clothes out of my pile for Goodwill realizing that their fit had miraculously improved. Now many people have indicated the opposite result of the pandemic as they began to bake and do a bit of stress eating. For me, it has been a delightful side benefit.

Perhaps the greatest change has been the decision to let my hair go grey, well actually silver. Now I don’t know if this is a permanent decision or a pandemic based temporary exploration of identity. Every so often I used to ask Jeffrey, my hair stylist of 30+ years, if it would make me look older. “Yes,” he solemnly replied and that was the end of the conversation. Sometimes he would comment that he thought I might have a cool white streak in front like Susan Sontag as he noted the silver hiding beneath. I was curious about my hidden cool streak, but wasn't quite sure how to expose it. I was due for a visit to Jeffrey when the salons closed down.  By the time they re-opened, I was intrigued by the person who was emerging beneath the color. She looked kind of interesting and I wondered who this new person would be. I decided to let it grow through those awkward stages. Where did I have to go anyway?

Susan Weinberg-blogger

When I looked at a picture I had submitted months ago for an on-line conference presentation, it no longer looked like me. I took my first picture of me with silver grey hair and re-submitted it. Then I changed my Zoom picture. I was slowly stepping into this new identity. This new me. 

Billie Eilish

Oddly enough it didn’t make me feel older. Quite the opposite. I felt like a fifteen-year-old playing with her hair. I pulled out the pretty hair clips and hair ties that I used when my hair was long. I put it up on my head, pulled portions of it back and tried it with different earrings. I flashed back on times when that felt familiar, a time of playing with identity, deciding who I would be. Apparently I'm still deciding.

 

Just as the weather turned, my husband and I went out to a nearby sculpture garden to meet some friends from out of town. With wide paths it offered an easy way to gather in relative safety. I had used a clip to put my hair up with strands escaping around my face in my two- toned hairstyle. We sat spread out around a table at an outdoor café when a woman approached and said, “I have to tell you I’ve been admiring your hair. I just love it. You're really rocking that  Billie Eilish look (an 18-year old singer-songwriter). “

 

I laughed in amusement at my new-found hipness, as I welcomed this new me with both delight and surprise.