Pandemic Problems

 So, it's been almost exactly a year since the world shut down for COVID 19. I was on a cruise ship when that happened, with spotty internet and no real idea what the rest of the world looked like while I planned my days around trivia quizzes, lectures and movies. We came home to a very different world than the one we'd left.

We all remember, I think, the last time things were "normal" before they changed. It's a shared experience; we all understand it.

As is usual, though, I find that I don't really understand how some other people reacted to the new reality. I mean, on an intellectual level, I can tell you how they feel, and why. I just do not emotionally relate to it.

Some people, when I'd post photos from my own back yard online, would say, "You went outside!?! Why? It's dangerous outside!" Well, look, being exposed to other people was potentially dangerous, but there's nobody in my back yard except me, and maybe someone who lives in my house with me. I didn't understand the extreme fear of simply existing in the world.

I went anywhere in public only once in that first month, to get groceries. There's three of us in my house, so in the first three months, each of us went to the store once. Maybe if I had a job outside my home - I don't - I would have been a bit more prepared for this, but when I finally went somewhere in mid to late April, I could not get over how many people were on the road. It looked like any other ordinary day. "Where are all these people going?" I wondered. 

After a month at home, I went driving to a lake just outside of town, hoping for fresh air and the chance to take photos; those are two of my preferred ways to relax. And all across town, the streets were full. When we got to the lake, the parking lot was almost full. Luckily, most of the people were out on the lake, wind surfing, so we were all distanced, and I got great photos. Still, I was a bit surprised by how many people were out and about. And how one of them wanted to walk RIGHT UP TO me to talk; hey, I don't even like that when I'm not worried about germs.

Which brings me to the other people that I don't understand, the people who experienced fear and anger and pain in being home all the time. I started to see all kinds of things online about how "humans aren't meant to live like this!" and predictions that violence and suicide would increase - and they did! This was a surprise to me.

Because I was, sincerely, happy as a clam. I woke up every day, especially in the first three or four months, thinking, "Yay!" I had no schedule, no expectations, no obligations, and it was delightful. For most of my life, I rarely watched TV during the day, but now, I had no problem with sitting down in my jammies and watching TV any time I felt like it. I read books, I painted, I stayed up late (for me, anyway) and slept in. I'd look online and see that people were taking online classes, cooking from scratch and making sourdough, and FaceTiming daily, and it just sounded exhausting. I was not organizing my closets and deep cleaning. I was rewatching old TV series - hello, Stargate Atlantis; I'm always going to gloat a bit that I knew how cool Jason Momoa was years before everybody else figured it out. I should have done more cleaning, really, but it felt like vacation, and who deep cleans on vacation? Not me. Everybody likes vacation - how were they not as happy as I was? Really, I was puzzled; I am puzzled.

But, because I was puzzled, I thought about it, I read about it, I talked to people, and I tried to figure out what people were thinking. I feel the need to repeat here that I don't look at differences as being an intrinsic case of, "who's wrong, who's right?" Right and wrong are for moral issues and the laws of physics, not for the fact that the world contains infinite variety, especially in humans. I'm also deeply puzzled any time someone sees that they're out of step, and immediately agonizes that they're wrong, or judges that everyone else is wrong and probably stupid. Some flowers are yellow, and some are red. Some dogs are small, and some are large. Some people prefer things that make me miserable, and vice versa. The point is to understand, not to relegate everything to two little boxes.

I also need to be clear that I am not speaking about about families or individuals who were experiencing job loss, illness, death of a loved one, lack of food, or anything else that is actually tragic. Those people deserve every bit of help and love and empathy that we have, and more. Their pain should, always, be our own. I also understand that most people were having some kind of empathy response, feeling for those who were experiencing these things. I'm speaking from my place of incredible privilege, about people whose homes looked a lot like mine - plenty of food (and TP), income, secure housing, good health, and loved ones who are mostly in that same boat, people whose lives are physically comfortable, but who now had to deal with being home (in comfort) almost all of the time, and were feeling uncomfortable about it.

The things that didn't resonate with me were things like, "How many times can you organize your sock drawer?" or actual angst, like the woman who said to me, "Was I always this friendless, and I just didn't notice?" I had to roll that around in my brain for a while, because it made no sense to me. How can you have fewer friends, just because you're at home, not out and about?

I think I've figured that out; it has to do with who we perceive as a friend. My definition is very broad and encompassing. If I like you, if I have positive thoughts about you or feelings for you, you are my friend. Unless I specifically dislike you, you're my friend. That means that you, personally, are in luck if we've ever met; I would be hard pressed to name more people than I can count on one hand as being people that I just do not like. Even then, even counting the very few people on the planet whose presence I avoid, I don't wish harm or misery on any of them. I hope they're happy and healthy, just not in my presence. If they were to be in my presence, I would be polite, unless pushed pretty aggressively.

Sure, I understand the concept of "close" and "casual" friends, but it's become fairly clear to me that I don't categorize the same way some other people do. There are people who have never been in my home, who have never hosted me in their home (despite living in my community), whose numbers are not stored in my phone, who are absolutely my close friends. Some I've known for decades. 

A few years ago at a funeral, I saw someone with whom I hadn't been in contact for over 20 years. But we were kids together, we understand a lot of each other's backstory, they could have my organs if they ever need them, so the first words out of my mouth were, "I love you!" accompanied by a hug. And they said, "I love you too! How have you been?"

I'm often sincerely puzzled by people who see each other several days a week. I don't understand that; I don't do that. My parents didn't do that. My parents had family, neighbors, friends that they liked, that they did things with, but there were no weekly bridge games or girls/guys nights. There were no daily, or almost daily, phone calls. I'm the same way. Seeing someone 3 or 4 times a year feels "often" to me.

I also sincerely cannot make sense of the idea, "Well, I did like you, I thought you were fun, but then we didn't see each other for a while, so now we're not friends anymore." When I talk to people who only feel close to someone if they see each other all the time, it feels artificial and needy. I can be outside of your presence and still feel that you're my friend. One of my close friends, who I've known since we were kids, described it this way: "I don't need to see people every day to know who my friends are."

Other people have called me and my relatives like me "anti social." I prefer the wording of a professional counselor that I once saw - "You just function with a very high degree of autonomy. Most people don't." I'm not afraid or unhappy, I'm just self contained, and I can't imagine why that would be a bad thing.

I remember being puzzled when I was a newlywed moving to a new town. I'd be hundreds of miles from the only city I'd ever lived in, moving to a city in which I knew no one but my husband. Someone who truly was concerned about me said something about how hard it would be, because "you won't have any friends!" I replied, "I'll have the same friends that I have right now."

"But there won't be anybody to hang around with, day to day!"

"I don't hang out with my friends much now." I was 20, only two years out of high school, but I considered frequent contact to be something that kids with a lot of free time did. Several of my best friends had moved away, others were in school full time, some were like me and working two jobs. There was not a lot of time or money for hanging out, and our schedules were no longer similar, nor did we all live in the same neighborhood anymore. Getting together was a 'special occasion" kind of thing. I thought that was normal; I still do. I liked them, they liked me, I still wrote long, newsy letters, but now I put stamps on them instead of handing them off between classes. I didn't feel the need to audition people for Frequent Contact Buddy, because I wasn't lonely without one.

And yes, sometimes being with other people feels very much like an audition. They're trying to figure out if they want to spend time with you. Sometimes, the answer is no; sometimes, that's a good thing. Not too long ago, a dear friend - someone else I've known since we were kids - told me about someone who phoned them and said, "I'm sorry, it just takes too much work to be your friend, and I can't do it." The reason? An invitation was extended, the answer was, "Let me check with the rest of my family, and see what the work schedules look like," and that took until the next day to accomplish. That sounds so very normal to me. My husband's in bed at 6 PM, and works 12 hour shifts; if it's not an emergency, I may not discuss it with him for about 24 hours, because I won't see him for about 24 hours. Apparently, the Invitation Extender felt that things can, and should, be determined quickly, and arranged via text almost immediately. Having to wait overnight stressed them out.

I have to say, if that's the case, then I couldn't really fit into their circle, which means that "we can't be friends," since their definition of "friend" looks different than mine. Theirs sounds exactly like "too much work" to me. I tell people, truthfully, that I don't often carry my phone, especially at home. Calls, texts, or emails are usually answered within 24 hours. If that doesn't work for you, then no hard feelings, but we should not plan on doing things together.

So, the pandemic doesn't feel all that different to me. In fact, I often see or speak to people more than I did before quarantine. I spent weeks taking Porch Portraits, because people were home and available, and I love to have subjects to photograph (and I could stand out on the sidewalk, no close contact). I took the first family photos for friends with a newborn. I took "first home" photos for young couples. I learned how to Zoom. People occasionally call just out of the blue, to see if we're OK. I do not feel ignored at all.

Do you know what has happened? I hate driving. I sincerely hate driving. I have been on the freeway only once in about 9 months, and I hated every second. It takes 15 minutes on the freeway to get to our favorite pizza place; I drive through town, taking 30 minutes. The first time I drove out of town since quarantine began, I had a little panic attack on the highway. It was a familiar road - I've driven it since I was a teen, and I was only going an hour away. I've driven it twice in a day before. Now, I just came unglued. That was ten months ago. I haven't driven on the highway since.

I've never been really comfortable with traffic or high speeds. Even as a kid, I was not a speed demon. I grew up during a time when 55 was the national speed limit, and I drove a clunky, slow VW van, and I really resent being asked to drive 75 now. It feels dangerous. It always has. So does traffic. My husband and I have always had a deal: on road trips, I will drive for hours through open country and small towns. He will drive in cities. I once had to drive home through LA when he was sick, and I spent at least an hour yelling at other cars and saying, "YOU OWE ME!" to my sick husband.

My brother lives about 10 hours away by car (at or near the speed limit). It's a familiar road; I've been on it, as a passenger and a driver, since I was a kid. Most of it is flat, straight, wide open road like you see in car commercials, where your visibility is 50 miles. But there are two mountain passes, steep and curving, that I hate. I'd be OK if I could drive them at 45 or 55, but I'm told that I can't, that someone will hit me from behind, so I cringe every second I'm there. I'm going too fast, other people are going WAY too fast, there's little visibility, there's no margin for error. I hate it - and that's on a good, normal day. I hate being a passenger there, too. Now, I do not know when I might ever be able to face that again. Certainly not now.

And I hate talking to people about it. I say, "I'd be fine if there were no other cars. I could mosey at 45, and everything would be fine." Then other people say, "What are you talking about? If there were no other cars, you could cruise at 120, and do 150 on the straightaways!" That just sounds like death. Speed is dangerous, speed turns small rocks into something that will spin you out or puncture your tire, it makes you likely to lose control, it will send you hurtling over edges and off of curves and tumbling down the mountain until you explosde. I hate speed. As a teen, I once got up to 65 downhill, and it felt like the Daytona 500 and a very bad idea. That means that other people do not "get" me.

Still, I coped well. Only a few years ago, I drove, by myself, on a 6+ hour round trip, on the highway, just to get photos for a niece's school Flat Stanley project. I left town headed north, and hours later, returned to town from the south. I had fun; the solo driving was a kind of meditation time. Now, I cannot muster up the courage to drive 10 minutes outside of town to take photos of the wild horses. Oh, I'll go one direction, on the old highway, because the new highway bypasses it, meaning there's almost no traffic on the old highway. But I will not get on the interstate.

Six months ago, I gritted my teeth, and was a passenger while my husband drove us an hour away, on smaller, state roads, for a tiny vacation. I didn't worry too much about the virus, but I worried A LOT about traffic. It felt as if I nearly had a stroke when he passed a highway department vehicle on a downhill curve. The drive was misery.

You're supposed to visualize doing things that you want to do, or get better at. I want to eventually drive on the freeway, and leave town on the highway, so I visualize it. I'm fine and calm until I visualize other drivers on the road. Then I freak out. I don't like other cars. They're deadly weapons, driven by impatient, distracted people. They could kill me.

Doing something frequently smooths out the edges of the anxiety, desensitizes you to it, so it becomes more doable. During this quarantine, I have lost all of my desensitization to traffic and speed and curves. I am a raw nerve ending.

I want to fix it. I eventually will fix it. But when people talk about what makes them sad right now, it's being home, and what makes them happy is leaving. I'm happy at home, and leaving makes me sad. Then people feel compelled to tell me that I'm "not normal," and need to work at being normal, because normal is a life goal. That's misery, too. "Normal" and "average" are just math. And I'm entitled to feel however I feel.

But in a society that considers sameness to be a bonding experience, I'm outside of the loop.

Out of the Dark

I always figured that I'd pretty much breeze through the physical signs of aging. When a friend despaired to me that, "Heads don't automatically turn when I walk into a room anymore," it was all I could do not to snort. I did say, "Welcome to the real world!" Heads have never turned when I walk into a room. Not only do 99% of my male friends not see me as female, a good portion of my female friends don't, either. I am gender neutral. This is totally OK with me. It weeds out the shallow men who don't want to talk to you unless they're hoping to have sex with you, as well as the catty, plastic looking Barbie women who are afraid that ordinariness is contagious.

Gray hair and wrinkles? Pfffttt. I earned these. Besides, I have NO desire to look ridiculously artificial.

Weight gain terrified me at 15, annoyed me at 25, and has since dropped totally off my radar. (Save the comments about how, "I can tell." It is not my job to impress anyone.) I have never been on a diet or purchased a weight loss product. This makes me a distinct minority (and horrifies some folks); I can live with that.

Not being fashionable? Please! First, you don't generally miss what you never had. Second, trends are short lived, superficial, contradictory and driven by the need to 1. make somebody money and 2. feel superior. Being fashionable now means being out of fashion in the future; it's a never ending cycle. If you're me, you're still happily wearing pants you bought 10 years ago, and you have no 1980s MC Hammer pants in your past.

I watched my mother breeze through menopause like it was a total non event, and was glad I'd inherited her genes. I'm hoping I'll have the same luck.

I found myself in my teens and already planning for what I would do if arthritis hit. So far, it hasn't; so much for being prepared.

I was prepared for night blindness, I thought. I'd watched my mother and my older friends first stop driving distances at night, then stop driving after dark, period. I expected it to come on gradually, though, and probably after 50.

It hit without warning, in my late 30s, in the middle of a nighttime drive down a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. I could not quite figure out what was happening. I had a sinus headache, the kind that pushes on the backs of your eyeballs, so I wondered if the congestion was bad enough to pinch off the optic nerves. I had never noticed any kind of trouble, strain or squinting, and suddenly I was unable to see, at 75 MPH.

If you've ever driven between Reno and Las Vegas on Highway 95, you know how much space is out there. You can go for hours between one stoplight towns. We'd left Reno when my husband left work, about 3:00 in the afternoon, hoping to make Vegas before we stopped for the night, on our way to Phoenix. We had a loooong way to go, and I couldn't see.

My husband was coming off seven days straight of 12 hour shifts, and had told us at 3 that he didn't feel up to driving. My oldest daughter was with us, but she hated driving our Suburban in town, in broad daylight. I couldn't imagine her tackling hours in the dark.

I kept slowing down until I was going about 45 MPH.  My husband would snap at me, "You can't go that slow! Someone will come up behind us and smash into us! You're going to kill us!" I'd snap back, "I can only see about 5 or 10 feet in front of me!"

Maddeningly, he'd say, "That's all you need to see!"

"At 75 miles an hour?"

"What's most important is what's directly in front of you. Do you think the road is going to disappear?" he asked. He never quite "got" my thought process until a couple of years later, after many similar conversations, when I asked, "When you walk into a familiar dark room, like our living room, do you run full speed through it, assuming that you'll know where everything is?" Then, it finally made some sense to him, but is still at odds with one of his firmest convictions, the idea that slowing down on a freeway or highway is unacceptable under all but the rarest and most extreme of circumstances. He's also sure that any kind of hesitation, or being unsure of anything while behind the wheel, is a perilous thing.

Making things worse was the constant stream of oncoming traffic, mostly semis. Cars passing in the opposite direction were aggravating, with their headlights starbursting in my field of vision, but in my Suburban, I am at almost the exact height of the headlights of semi trucks. Their lights were right in my eyes and obliterated my vision for about a full second, even when I kept my eyes fixed on the opposite side of the road, toward the shoulder on my side. A second doesn't sound like a very long time, until you count it out, saying, "one one thousand." Imagine that at highway speed, and you'll understand why it freaked me out.

Needless to say, my husband and I were both at our wits end on this particular drive.

When we hit the next town, we stopped for dinner and got a hotel room as well. None of the adults in the car felt capable of driving, and no one wanted to end up as roadkill.

I couldn't make up my mind on that trip whether this was a temporary or permanent thing. It seemed so sudden and so complete - I'd expected age related night blindness to sneak up on me.

It soon became clear, though, that this was my new reality. I can drive all right in town, where everything is lit, but forget highway driving after dark. My depth perception is also completely unreliable in the dark. I can't reliably recognize curbs, for instance. Pushing my elderly mother in a wheelchair at Disneyland, I ran the chair off the curb and dumped my mother out onto the ground, where the wheelchair fell on top of her. My middle daughter stepped in - "Give Grandma to me! Just give her to me!" I was relieved of further wheelchair duty as soon as dusk approached every day for the rest of the trip.

Mostly, I function without falling or wreaking havoc. I run my hands along a lot of walls, though.

I didn't think much about how I would cope backstage; it never really occurred to me that it might take some adjusting. I've spent pretty much my whole life onstage or backstage - it feels as comfortable as my own home. Then I found myself backstage in the dark on the world's largest indoor stage.

I was playing a chorus part in the Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast." I'd wanted to be Mrs. Potts, but hey, so had every other actress too old to play Belle. Anymore, I only take chorus parts if it's a show that I'm really passionate about, and this one fit the bill.

It was performed in the Grand Theater at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort. The stage was built back when the building was the MGM Grand, and it's impossible to describe how enormous it is if you haven't been on it. Normally, everyone has to whisper in dressing rooms, but these are so far back that you can hold normal conversations, and even laugh, and not be heard onstage. There's usually several rows of thick velvet drapes across the backstage area between the dressing area and the performance area. A 727 airplane, left over from the first show produced in the space ("Hello, Hollywood, Hello!") sits permanently backstage, along with a sweeping staircase, huge columns and other set pieces.

At several points, I had to cross behind the set, which has never been a big deal before. Suddenly, it was. I had to follow someone else, or creep along with my hands out in front of me like a ridiculous cartoon.

During one performance, I was making my way from stage right to stage left, headed eventually to the dressing room. I thought I knew where I was going, and I blundered into some of the ropes used to secure the drapes. This is a huge, huge no-no. I wasn't hurt, and I didn't goof anything up, but it underscored for me how much I could screw up by wandering around blind.

I put my hands out in front of me and crept along with tiny steps. The show had a huge cast, with performers as young as 8, and I nearly ran into one of the children in the cast. I apologized for my clumsiness. "I just ran into the ropes too," I whispered. "I can't see in the dark."

A tiny voice came out of the dark at about my chest level. "That's OK. You know me. Take my hand."

I couldn't see the offered hand, but I held mine out. A small hand grasped it, and led me gently through the dark. As soon as I could see the lights of the dressing area, my guide said, "I've gotta go," and scurried off back into the dark behind me.

I was almost absurdly grateful. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my benefactor and say, "Thank you," since I couldn't even be sure of the child's gender or age, much less identity. It was a kindness I couldn't repay in any way. We had a cast of over 100, many of them children or teens - it could have been any one of dozens of pint sized actors. It's a delight to work with responsible kids, just as it's a headache to deal with the opposite.

I'm usually pretty good at admitting when I'm out of my depth. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable continuing to blunder along than I am asking for help. I don't feel I have anything to prove; I just dislike having to count on anyone else. "If you want something done right..." and all that jazz. (Yes, it is entirely possible that I have trust issues.)

Sometimes, the universe sends you unmistakable messages. This one reminded me that there are times when someone, even someone unlikely, will have my back. It reminded me that there are times when I'd be an idiot not to ask for help. It also reminded me that, occasionally, even if you don't ask for help, it will appear out of the dark and guide you through.

Sometimes, we all hear the equivalent of that small voice in the darkness, and we can take comfort knowing that we'll be well cared for (even if we really aren't sure by whom or how). As I get older, there will undoubtedly be many more of those moments, both literal and figurative. At those times, I'll think back to the gratitude I felt at that moment.

"It's OK. You know me. Take my hand."