Lockdown Yarzeit: A Year in Quarantine

I cannot believe it’s been a year. A year of trying to help your aunt unmute herself on Zoom for the 15th time. A year of sourdough and new hobbies and cleaning out closets and home renovation. A year of unspeakable loss and pain. 

I’ve been thinking about the young LGBTQ+ kids stuck at home with hateful people who torment them or who make it clear that they are not welcome to be themselves. The kind of burden it takes to have to twist and warp yourself to be what other people require you to be. Where your family would prefer you be dead over be queer.

I’ve been thinking about the people experiencing intimate partner violence or domestic violence after being trapped with their abusers in cycles of abuse that seem to get more intense each passing day.

Those who are now experiencing houselessness because they lost their jobs, or who spend their nights crying, praying that they’ll be able to pay rent this month.

I’m thinking about the older folks in retirement homes and nursing facilities with dementia or Alzheimer’s, who may not remember what life was like before the only people who come to visit you are wearing plastic suits. Who don’t understand why their loved ones no longer visit. Who may not remember what it feels like to hold someone’s hand and feel their warmth in a hug.

I’m thinking about all the healthcare workers who have witnessed more than anyone should in a lifetime, in one year. And how they keep showing up. And the teachers, who have gotten so creative to hold little one’s attention through a screen with innovation and perseverance. The grocery store workers who are so tired of telling people to keep their mask on, while they make sure we can have food on our tables. All of the therapists and social workers and clergy people who have shouldered everyone’s trauma, while dealing with their own. All the parents, especially mothers, who have been somehow finding ways to keep their families smiling, learning, supported, and having all their needs met.

 

And with all of this devastation, I’m also thinking about the activists who came into their own this year with time to be able to go into the streets and march, and organize. The trans people who were able to explore their genders this year, and finally began discovering who they are. The artists who honed their craft and began seeing that to create art is to be human, and to be human is to create art.

 

I’m thinking about what it means that we know how much simple actions mean  - like a gentle text telling someone you love them and are thinking of them or dropping off dinner so someone doesn’t have to cook that night. How a hug means that much more. How even when all of this is a memory, we will hold each other for an extra beat, just because we know how precious our lives are. How precious it is to host a dinner with people we love and laugh until the late hours with good food and good music. How profound it will feel to be able to get on a plane and fly to support our friends giving birth. To hold the people we love and never let them go. To meet our friends’ foster children for the first time and get to know the people they are and will become. To learn in a classroom with other people, and feel that feeling of electricity in a fantastic discussion. How it will feel to finally be on that beach, on vacation, exploring that new city, meeting new people, smiling at strangers. How that will heal parts of us that we won’t know have been broken until our toes are in the sand and we can finally, finally breathe in that salt and sunshine mask-free. How it will feel to be able to be in person for religious services, weddings, family reunions, and funerals too. How we’ll be able to wipe each other's tears and lean on each other’s shoulders.

 

I’m thinking about how we will finally be able to really know each other again. All that we’ve become and all the bullshit we’ve left behind. How beautiful and soul-inspiring it will be to honor each other’s humanity that much more.

A year ago, stocked up on groceries—and worrying about my dwindling supply of toilet paper, I hunkered down in my cluttered West Hollywood apartment, not too concerned about lockdown.  If we all did our part, we would flatten the curve and be back to normal by May.  I could return to Disneyland in June and join my family in Colorado in July to celebrate my Mother’s 85th birthday.

 

A few weeks, maybe a couple months, confined to my apartment didn’t seem all that bad.  After all, I’d been alone before.  I had my books, my notebooks, my pens, subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, and DisneyPlus.  

 

I would not just survive.  I would thrive.

 

I had a project to complete: revising a draft of the first book of my epic.  The enforced isolation would make this task easier.

 

Fewer distractions.

 

I finished the revisions on time.  I got them to my editor.  He got them back to me in mid-May.  We were not back to normal.  No problem.  I could complete work on his edits and send selected passages back to him in July.  I had used lockdown to good end before.  I could continue to profit from this isolation.

 

[PAUSE]

 

I completed those revisions only last week.  Of course, a few things intervened, a minor emotional breakdown resulting in my decision to buy a house.  

 

But even so, I was not as focused as I had been.

 

What I learned in the two months after receiving those edits parallels, I believe, something that many of us have experienced.

Even alone without social distractions—save for the occasional socially-distanced walk—I was not as I had been in the first months of lockdown.  I was easily distracted, spending too much time on Facebook and other social media, dilly-dallying online, following links about obscure languages and ancient scripts, watching YouTube videos of Kennedy Center honors and Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball’s comic antics. 

 

Among other things. 

 

These past nine months, with fewer worldly distractions, I have been more easily distracted.

 

And I know from Facebook that many of you have also been so distracted.  You too have had trouble concentrating.  Spending hours shopping online.  Experimenting with new recipes or trying your hand at old ones, Bubbe’s rugeleh, Safta’s Babka, Grandma Tzeitl’s Mandelbread.  Binge-watching multiple shows. 

 

Being alone does not necessarily make us productive.

 

And yet we read of the writer who escapes to a cabin in the woods to write the great American novel or the poet who escapes to an isolated beach house to turn images that struck her—and memories that stuck with her—into poems that will enlighten the ages.

 

If he can write a great book on his own, if she can translate intriguing images into powerful poetry, why can’t we be productive when socially isolated?

Only in lockdown did the answer, already emerging in my subconscious, manifest itself fully.  Did you catch that verb I used when writing about the novelist and the poet?

 

[Pause for effect]

 

Escape.  

Both the diligent novelist and the productive poet were escaping.  

Escaping from a busy life in the city, time-consuming social interactions, professional obligations, cultural associations, religious observations, family, friends.  The often-distracting hubbub of everyday life.  A distracting hubbub that sounds so appealing right now.

 

The isolated cabin of this novelist, the beach house of this poetess represented a break from regular interactions with their fellows—from other men, other women.

They had not been alone, they had not been locked down before they escaped to their isolated retreat.

 

I had not been entirely alone before the first month of lockdown when I completed the first edits on time.

 

But after that work was done, I couldn’t rejuvenate with my fellows.  I wasn’t able to come to Kol Ami on Friday night to pray with you, to hug you, to go to Canter’s with you.  I wasn’t able to travel with friends and to visit family.  I didn’t get to take my nephews to Disneyland.

 

Without that nourishing, without that sustaining human contact, I was less productive when my editor returned my writing with his markups.

 

I needed—we all need—human contact, real human contact, not just the words of a text, a voice on the phone, a face on a zoom, to thrive.  Yes, those things help—and they have made this lockdown bearable, but they are not enough.

We live through connection.

Human connection.

 

No wonder Rabbi Hillel warned us not to separate ourselves from community.  Al tifrosh min hatzibur.

 

Without community, a creative genius would never realize his genius.

There are many things I have observed under lockdown.  What is good for our physical health may not be good for our mental health.

We can’t sustain a life like this.   It isn’t natural.  We need each other.

So many things I have learned under lockdown.  But those four words are the most important.

We.  Need.  Each.  Other.

 

A few days, a few weeks even, alone is only good if it follows a long time in company.  A few months alone makes us more distracted.  A year alone is almost unthinkable.

 

And yet here we are.

 

But soon we’ll be together again.  We will no longer be separated from our community.

And when we are, let us cherish what we learned.  Let us never take human connection for granted.  

Let us always value the presence of our fellows.  

Let us always delight in the miracle of a hug.