Everything I Need to Know I Learned During the Pandemic

 Los Angeles, California

Did you ever see those greeting cards and posters from the nineties that listed: Everything I need to know I learned from my: Dog; Goldfish; Hairdresser... etc.? They were a play on the feel-good book, Everything I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. In trying to put a more positive ("positive", positive?), ok, not a word I like. In trying to put a more enlightened spin on a really awful time, I decided to compile a list of some of what I learned during the past pandemic year. The everything in the title was hyperbole.

I can cook for myself for 300+ nights. I logged each meal I prepared and can look back to see what I was eating from mid-March on. A friend asked why would you do this? If you don't get it, it's hard to explain, but recently, Sam Sifton of The New York Times Cooking wrote that he wished he would have done this. Just goes to show you. And, to come clean, there were instances of slipping down into dorm food. No, not Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (only once in my life), but there were some Roy Choi doctored-up ramen bowls. And that's ok. There were also Friday night meatless dinners, usually pasta. And pork tenderloins, a new recipe for roast chicken, lots of velvety slow-roasted or poached salmon; roasted chicken thighs with scallions and jasmine rice. My go-to salad was Caesar, usually without croutons, but with homemade Caesar dressing. There were very few desserts. I did not bake a cake nor brownies nor a pie during the year. I just haven't much of a taste for sweets except for an occasional Saturday night spumoni ice cream cone, and a run on Yasso yogurt bars that ran for most of the summer before petering out. Ok, to come clean, there was that box of Mallomars, but I never finished it. I mostly avoided potato and tortilla chips as I couldn't get small enough bags to eat. I am tempted to eat the whole bag, so it really needs to be a small one. Plus, I missed the Stuffing Potato Chips at Trader Joe's. Evidently they arrrived and were sold out the same day. That's ok, they'll be back next year. One thing I am very good at is delayed gratification. Maybe that's why I've more or less done ok through the pandemic. Not great, mind you, but ok.

I can cut my own hair. Then again, I have some experience having, in the past, gone at my hair occasionally after not getting the cut I wanted. I got much better at this through the pandemic. It's all about geometry and angles and then cutting into the ends so they lie less bluntly. I have long hair, so I am able to cut the back length. If my hairstyle was short, I would never have been able to do this. Fortunately, I made the decision a long time ago that after going through most of my adult life with a lob or a short bob, I would grow my hair out when I reached a certain age. It was an iconoclastic decision, as we heard when growing up that at middle age a woman should cut her hair and never wear jeans nor short skirts. But that bought into the American youth culture that indicated that mature woman lose their sex appeal. And that led to women trying to hang onto youth through plastic surgery. Eighty year-old women are not supposed to look like Barbie. That's just weird. I always admired women like Sophia Loren, Catherine Deneuve and Sonia Braga who seemed to fly in the face of that and embrace mature sexiness. And I liked the updos that both Hepburns wore as they grew older. My aunt, who was classically elegant, wore her hair in a Hitchockian chignon. As she aged, she switched to a Gibson Girl updo. Even in my thirties I knew that when I grew older I would emulate that rather than the Golden Girls look of my mom's hairstyle. That was a long time before I found myself in the LA salsa community where women can embrace femininity and sex appeal at any age, and for the most part, women have long hair and men have short. But I suppose the bottom line about my long hair is that, like most everything else in my life, it is about how I feel not what I think. And really, if you reflect on the liberation of our times including acceptance of people changing gender, isn't it silly to want to hold women to abide by those old rules? And to throw some judgement at judgementalism, when I hear people criticizing celebrities and others for their fashion choices, I can't help but think that it's a bit... shallow. Why should we care? So, if you want to wear white shoes after Labor Day, go head on, as it is alright with me. After all, I'm the one with the ponytail.

I can listen to my body. By setting up a fitness plan and adapting it as I went along, I began to pay better attention to what my body was telling me. I have done pilates for a couple of decades, and have worked with Cathy for much of that time. She is magnificent in her intuitive awareness of the body issues of her clients and patients (for she became a practitioner of Chinese medicine during this time). But, because I relied on Cathy, I got lazy and didn't pay enough attention to what my body was telling me in terms of what I needed and what I should forego in movement and exercise. Early on in the pandemic, I realized that I hate walking. For years I have tried to put myself onto a program which included walking, and it never worked for me. I returned to old-fashioned aerobics last March, and have not stopped. I incorporated salsa, weight work and mat work. And somewhere along the way, I actually started paying attention and varying my work by exploring the possibilities and limits of my body in motion. It was revelatory.

Follow the bad thoughts with good ones. Not to be confused with that positivity movement where anything bad happening in life is cast in an altered way. I thoroughly acknowledge the thoughts about what is evil in the world and what is sad and bad in my life. I let them have their full weight. But I have learned not to chase them down the road. I have also learned that there is a peril in positivity. It can keep you from living in all of the rooms of your house, so to speak. But you can follow a negative thought with a hopeful one. Not changing the thought into a "positive" one, but following the dark cloud with some hopeful rays of light. It's a completely different concept than positivity. You're not a kid pouring honey and maple syrup on evil vegetables, because you are secure in the knowledge that once the vegies are consumed, your dessert will follow. Weird metaphor for me, as I actually like most vegetables except winter squashes (which you actually can dress up with honey/maple syrup, but now this is getting crazy and the metaphors have taken control of the post).

There are all kinds of ways to connect with loved ones. I have carried on an email exchange, much like pen pals, with two friends; one new and one a reconnection from the past. Aside from being a practice in writing, it has been interesting to correspond on a variety of topics and get to know them better. One is a girlfriend who lives nearby. The other is a male friend who lives in London. With a few of my friends we have relied on texting. But with most we have connected through making dates to connect by phone or Facetime. The Facetime connections have mostly been happy hours. We spruce up a bit, shake up a cocktail, and visit as we used to, only now virtually. After our catch-up, we disconnect and go off to make our own meals. It's probably the connection that has been the most... human. Good to see faces again. Of course I miss the in-person contact. But sitting with masks on six feet away from each other for conversation just didn't work for me.

Time fills the day. I work out and/or write almost every day, and I have my daily round of things I must do to keep up my home. The one thing I thought I would have was a lot of unscheduled time. But I don't. At the beginning of the first lockdown, I drew up a weekly schedule and while it has evolved, I still manage to fill my day. I might be moving more slowly in order to do this, but I often run out of time to get everything done. How did I fit days spent with girlfriends into my pre-Covid life? Evenings spent with Joel dancing salsa? I think like water filling a glass, time fills the day.

A little bit of TV is more than enough. On New Year's Eve, I heard Anderson Cooper say that one of his hopes for 2021 was that people would stop telling him that he needed to watch Schitt's Creek. I was alone, but I laughed out loud. It seemed that a lot of people spent 2020 watching a lot of series TV. Lord knows I tried. And I did get through and even liked a couple that I watched. But I couldn't sit still long enough. There are just too many hours in series TV. I could barely get through movies. When I said to my friend, Christopher, that I would be thirteen hours closer to death if I watched a certain series, he responded that, no, I wouldn't. Which is true, but it's kind of like the old joke: Doctor, if I give up smoking, drinking, and sex will I live to one hundred? To which the doctor replied: No, but it will feel like it. No doubt, I watched an excess of CNN from October until this week. But a lot of the time it was just background. I did watch the Dodgers play through the shortened season. I listened to NPR. I put together workout playlists on iTunes. I wrote. I read. I dabbled in Spanish online. I resubscribed to the print version of The New Yorker. Meanwhile, I watched the first episode of a lot of the series that people recommended to me. I even made it through most of the first season of The Crown. And I got exercise walking away from all of it.

I will better value a lot of things when life resumes. Time spent with Joel at my house or dancing or watching Dodgers' games at the bar at Sol y Luna. Days or evenings spent with my girlfriends, and with Connie and Curt, and with Todd and Christopher. Finally being able to spend time with Larry. The resumption of Lynnette coming to stay at my house, as often as we can manage once a month throughout the year. Attending Mass at St. Charles Borromeo. Resuming pilates with Cathy and my partner, Beth. Shopping with Lisa at Century City on a sunny day. Having my Sonoma friends as houseguests for a summer visit. Going to afternoon movies by myself. Scheduling a writing retreat in a VRBO in Carmel. Getting to know my new neighbors better, and talking more about scheduling a street party. I wrote this quickly off the top of my head, and it is probably less than half of all I look forward to in the freedom of our future.

The biggest thing I learned was not a surprise at all. It is that I never want to go through another pandemic like this again. Due to its handling, we lost at least a year our of our lives. But the other side of it is, that if someone had told me that I would live this way for a year, I would not have thought I could do it. We did it, one way or another. It was crappy. It was a drag. It was impossibly hard at times. But if you learned more about your strength and your ability to follow rules when rules needed to be followed, you deserve a big gold star. And here is the thing that I didn't need to learn. That sometimes when things are bad, it is appropriate to feel bad. Life isn't designed to be always happy, despite what we all believed as kids while listening to Beatles' songs. Hang on just a bit longer. We are almost out of that long, long, long tunnel. Hey look! ... Here comes the sun!

Thank you for reading my blog.