On picking up where we left off

but am I ready for this?

I’m eager to go back to living fully again, but I also don’t want to go back. Things have changed and I’m not the same physically or emotionally.

It’s Thursday night and we’re lying in bed before 8pm with all the lights off and the curtains closed. We’re both spent. Maybe it’s the start of the changing season, or maybe it’s just another day of sitting in front of our computer screens, of vacuuming up construction dust, of driving over the bridge twice in one day. We’ve been at this remodel now since last spring, when we started spending our weekends on the Cape cleaning out the basement and finding places we could donate items even though everything was closed down.

“President Biden is speaking tonight in a few minutes,” I say to my spouse Janyce in the dark. We should listen.”

“Sure,” she says.

I can barely see her, but I can hear her fidgeting with the heating pad, positioning it onto her newly vaccinated and aching arm.

“I wish he would leave God out of it,” says Janyce.

“I’m glad that he is taking a moment to mark the occasion, though,” I say.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the pandemic. I remember where I was when everyone was sent home in a rush from my workplace. I was already home and in bed, with what I’m sure was a moderate case of Covid-19. I also remember talking with my mother in Florida, who I’m pretty sure had the virus at the same time as me, listening to her wheeze into the phone, and trying not to sound as scared as I felt. When I look back, I can clearly see all of the emotions that have tired me out, the mourning of several personal deaths, worrying over sick family members, losing the well-worn routines of my life.

Earlier this week, I was taking one of my longer walks outside and relishing the feeling of the sun on my face while listening to music in my earphones. I waved to a man walking toward me wearing his mask while I pulled up my own. And then, there it was. A giant lump in my throat. I’m crying? When it is so beautiful out and some real relief is actually on the way?

Right before I left the house, while I was getting my music cued up and my laces tied, I stopped to open up an envelope that was in the stack of mail left on the boxes piling up in the garage. It was an invitation to a wedding I was so looking forward to attending a year ago, and one that has been postponed twice now. I’m planning to fly to South Carolina this summer and to celebrate with these friends I haven’t seen in over a year. I’m eager to go back to living fully again, but I also don’t want to go back. Things have changed and I’m not the same physically or emotionally.

Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self said, “We've had an experience where we've really missed each other in a very profound way and I think we can't wait to get back to each other.”

She’s right about that. But she also said, and here’s the crux of the matter to me, “On the other hand, there's a great danger because being on screens makes us feel less vulnerable. And we’ve become accustomed to enjoying that lack of vulnerability.”

One of my favorite motivational speakers, Mel Robbins, sent me (and her more than 700,000 subscribers on her mailing list) a very open-hearted accounting of what the past year has been like for her. I read her story—how her show was cancelled, how her book deal was rescinded and her advanced money needed to be returned after she had already spent it, how people she knew died from contracting the virus this year. I was grateful for her sharing. She has a privileged life like mine: a beautiful family, success, and enough money. But here’s what I took away from her letter. She has to reinvent herself again now, and she is figuring that out, even though she doesn’t want to do it. I can relate to that.

“While it was different for everyone, we all lost something.

A collective suffering. A collective sacrifice. A year filled with the loss of life — and the loss of living for all of us.

But, in the loss, we saw how much there was to gain in appreciation, respect, and gratitude.

Finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do. In fact, it may be the most American thing we do,” said our new President in his first prime-time address to the nation.

I squint in the dark of our bedroom to see if Janyce is still awake. “How is your arm feeling?” I say.

“Mmm okay… I don’t know,” she says, softly and slowly, clinging on to her last few moments of lucidity, but already mostly asleep.

I lie awake listening to the end of the President’s speech, and I think about the vaccine that is coming my way, the Cape Cod cottage that is almost ready for rental season, and my long unfinished book that I’m just now getting ready to start writing again. I think about Mel’s encouraging letter urging us to get back out there and pick back up where we left off.

“No matter what’s happened in your life this year, good or bad, your dreams are still inside you. They are there waiting in the back of your mind. You need them now more than ever.”