Renewal 2020

Late February, when COVID was still a blip on the national news, my husband and I flew to New York City to visit our son and his new wife in their newly purchased brownstone in the Bronx. I had packed my puffy down jacket for the wintry blast of freezing weather, and we reveled in attending “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway (my Christmas present from Bob), followed by Frazer and Adrienne showing us their favorite ethnic restaurants and jazz clubs in Harlem and Manhattan. It was a splendid way to start the new year. Until it wasn’t. When we returned home five days later, on March 2nd, I felt the first rumbles of a crumbling world.

En route home from San Francisco to the Sonoma County Airport, the cabin was abuzz with tales of long lines and hoarding at local big box stores. When a frizzy-haired woman leaned across the aisle to recount the hoarding of toilet paper at the Santa Rosa Costco I looked at her in disbelief.

“Why would anyone want to hoard TP?” I asked her.

She explained that county officials had issued alerts about shopping restrictions imposed due to the spread of the coronavirus.

“By the time I got to Costco, the shelves were bare of toilet paper. Even paper towels were in short supply,” she said.

Our world was about to be upended by a virus that would soon become a political football nationwide.

By March 22nd, when Governor Newsom announced a statewide shelter-in-place order, my husband and I found ourselves caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Folks like us, over sixty, were deemed most vulnerable to the virus. Within hours of the new restrictions, our well-meaning adult kids kicked into action.

“Now, Mom,” our protective older son warned me by phone, “you’re not going to Oliver’s to get your groceries, are you?” He helpfully gave me the names or two or three apps for home deliveries.

I had to decide, on the spot, if I would continue my habit of full disclosure about our daily goings-on, or whether I should tamp down unnecessary worry about our safety by omitting a few details here and there. I chose the latter approach. I hated the idea of locking myself in our home 24/7. Mind you, I felt my actions were justified. I limited my outings to Oliver’s weekly “seniors’ day” and abided by the health protocols, including wearing masks, social distancing, and liberally spraying hand sanitizer. But I drew the line at wiping down grocery bags and stashing Amazon boxes outside for a couple of days before opening them. Sometimes I found myself confounded by my own choices, unable to convince myself they made sense.

By July, we had settled into our new life routines fairly well. Except, that is, for a brief flurry of Marco Polo communications with one of our young families—the one with four young children whom we hadn’t seen in five months, except for a short visit staged in their backyard where the six of them sat lined up in folding chairs across the patio from the two of us, the children smiling and waving gamely at us while fidgeting in their seats. It felt awful despite their best efforts to welcome us.

I felt conflicted. Was it better to see our grandchildren and their parents in this stilted setting than not at all? Or, did we need to create a new protocol that somehow allowed closer contact? Out of desperation, I broached the subject via a short video, asking for our children’s help. After a few tense hours, I got the thoughtful response I was hoping for. We agreed to exchange visits similar to the “pods” they had formed with close friends, whose outside contact was strictly limited. We deemed it worth the calculated risk.

Late August, five days after Bob’s knee replacement surgery, our daughter Carly and her two young sons moved in with us for a planned five-week stay while her husband was sequestered at a Pacific Gas and Electric Company special operations center. The goal was a worthy one: the power company had identified a select cohort of employees who would remain COVID-free by remaining in isolation during California’s dangerous wildfire season. Carly’s stay coincided with extreme heat and poor air quality, confining one-year-old Thorin and four-year-old Ronin indoors much of the time.

Faced with these new circumstances, I contacted my developmental editor to request a hiatus from novel-writing until life returned to a semblance of normalcy. Her supportive response felt like a gift, allowing me to focus on critical family needs and to enjoy this unexpected time with my daughter and grandsons. Fortunately, everyone emerged in reasonably good spirits as Bob and I made plans for a two-week road trip to Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Getting on the road on the tenth of October felt exhilarating. We travelled in a little bubble, escapees from wildfire evacuations, smoke-filled air, and the humdrum of new and changing COVID restrictions on a daily basis. Driving east over the Sierras on I-80, I relived many trips over Donner Pass, savoring the spectacular granite outcroppings and the Truckee River flowing past Reno into the Humboldt Sink in the Nevada desert. These unchanging elements of the expansive western landscape nudged my spirit toward renewal. In subsequent days, I found myself pondering the beauty of the snow-dusted Ruby Mountains near Elko and the indefatigable Colorado Rockies that already showed signs of renewal from wildfire damage sustained only weeks before.

Eight months into the COVID era, I came upon a New York Times interview with Louise Gluck, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gluck’s simple statement about how she dealt with the year’s difficult challenges resonated with me, “The hope is that if you live through it, there will be art on the other side.” Her words are now my guiding principle for renewal of my creative spirit through this pandemic.