We're So Close: An Appeal from One Contact Tracer

I'm tired. I've gone too deep in. I'm down the COVID hole and I can't get out. Nine months ago I took a job as a contact tracer. At the time I found great comfort in being on the front lines, learning all there is to know about this virus, and trying to help contain it.

Now I'm done. It happened slowly but also quickly. One day I just could not bear to hear another story about COVID. I did not want to know how many people were in the household or where they worked. I didn't want to hear about what restaurants they'd eaten at or where they had traveled. One day I was saturated, full to the rim with COVID content and I could take in not one more iota of information.

In the last month, my COVID work has become more vaccine-oriented. I have been helping people find vaccines and working at various vaccination clinics in my county. This has been a nice respite from the contact tracing but it's still COVID and I realize that I'm done with this too. With every person I see getting vaccinated, I see the image of someone I love NOT getting vaccinated. I need a break from it all.

Yesterday I had conversations with three people who were exploding with anxiety about COVID. It was as if a universal emotional dam collapsed and feelings were flooding the atmosphere. I felt it and when I talked to these friends, they obviously felt it too.

What do we do now? We are straddling a crevasse-- one foot in COVID fear and devastation and one foot on COVID recovery and health. Where I live, we are vaccinating people at a pace slightly higher than the national rate, but our case numbers went up 34% yesterday!

How do we step onto the recovery and health side of the crevasse when case numbers are going up like this? Standing like this indefinitely is exhausting. My legs are tired. I have to pee. The ground feels shaky. I just want to step onto one side and rest for a while. 

When we were in full-on COVID crisis I felt like I was pushing a boulder up a hill, little by little, step by step, everyday working a little bit to get to the top of the mountain. And while I, and thousands of other people did this, other people were pushing another boulder up the other side of the mountain. There were making a vaccine, figuring out how to get it into people's arms. Now we're at the top of the mountain but there's a chasm. Fuck!

After all this work we just want to rest, maybe have a picnic and sit in the sun. We're so close. If we could just get a break here. I imagine superhuman forces pushing the two sides of the mountain closer together. Maybe if everyone just circled the mountain, counted to three, and pushed, we could close this gap and finally rest. Then we could all take off our masks, hold hands, look into the clear blue sky and breathe.

But we are jumping the gun. From the bottom of the mountain, we're not seeing that little space that still needs to be closed up. We just need to work together for a little bit longer. Joe Biden says July 4th. That sounds good! People, please, let's just get our shit together and push these two broken pieces of mountain together. We are so close. Stay safe. Hold off on the travel and the gathering. Be responsible. We are almost there. Think about how great it will be when the crevasse is closed and we can have that picnic in the clouds. 

You Could Learn a Lot from a Nurse

For the past few months, I have been working at COVID-19 vaccination sites. My job as a contact tracer took a pivot when cases went down and vaccines came on the scene. Working at the vaccine sites is one of the most joyful, healing, and connecting experiences I’ve had in a long time. 

Everyone who comes to the vaccination clinic is so happy. They are nervous with excitement, thrilled in the way Charlie was when he finally opened a Wonka Bar and found a golden ticket. They cannot believe they are finally there getting their shot.

I work with nurses every day. After I check in the people they go to a nurse to get their vaccine. When I screen people, I know that many of them are not being honest about their eligibility. My judgemental nature, the one who says, “this is right, and that is wrong” rears its head and withholds a smile from under my mask for these people. I am judging them. I know they are skipping the line, not waiting their turn like many millions of Americans. 

But the nurses never judge. They welcome the people into the folding chair, look into their eyes, tell them it won’t hurt much at all, and listen if they have questions. The nurses, though they give hundreds of shots to do in a day, never rush. And they treat every single person with a gentle, caring attitude.

I have learned a lot from these nurses.

1. Even though I think I’m right all the time, I don’t actually know everything.
2. Even if someone is rude or smelly or inappropriate, you can still treat them with kindness and openness. 
3. When you treat someone with kindness and openness, it is contagious.

As I’ve moved through my days at the vaccination clinics, silently stewing in my judgment of people who are not following the state delineated phase guidelines, the nurses have been floating around in an orb of golden light doling out magic pricks of hope and healing. I’ve talked to them about my struggle to not judge and they look at me lovingly and say something like, “everyone needs a vaccine” or “we can never know the whole story.”

Yesterday a thirty-something, drunk, surly man arrived for his vaccine. I checked him in but could barely look him in the eyes. My disdain for him was verging on explosive and it was all I could do to just get him to the nurse. The nurse, a seventy-something white-haired good-witch smiled and said, “Welcome, is this your first shot today?” and when he replied yes, she clapped her hands together and said, “Wuuuuunderful.” 

I watched this nurse in awe. Her genuine open heart and generous spirit was captivating. It made me want to be more like her. To watch her made me want to give that energy to the world instead of my “I’m right and you’re wrong” attitude. 

If all of the people like me were more like that nurse, our world would be so much more loving and kind and happy. When the surly drunk guy got out of the folding chair and walked towards the area where he’d sit and be observed for fifteen minutes, he seemed lighter on his feet. I couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes were smiling. That nurse had added some golden light to his day and hopefully, he would pay it forward today or sometime in the future. 

And every time the nurses had an interaction like that they forged a connection. With each person they pricked with a shot and blessed with a warm pat on the back or a kind word, they created a sense of being in this together. In contrast, with every person I judged for being too young or too healthy or too drunk, I created a breach. In my judgment I made the person feel shame or humiliation, even without saying a word. 

It’s easy to sit in judgment of others. It’s safe. It keeps us separate and apart from things we don’t know or want to understand. What’s hard, but ultimately better for the world is to be open and loving, even towards people who don’t fit the mold of what we might think is right and good and honest. 

Working with the nurses has taught me that kindness trumps judgment just like love trumps hate. I know I have a lot of work to do to unravel my years of finding safety in the right and wrong, but today I am forever grateful for what I’ve learned from the nurses.

Popsicles in First Grade

 

This week I got in touch with an old friend. Our parents were friends and then we went all the way through high school together. Then, we ended up in graduate school three thousand miles from home together after college.

Over the last ten years, we’ve lost touch with each other but recently Jesse and I reconnected via email and text. Yesterday I tried calling her and left a long message. Later in the day I got a text trying to schedule a time to talk. She wrote, “When I heard your voice I almost cried realizing how much I’ve missed you.”

Last night as I was thinking about her, a memory of first grade came into my mind. That was the year my parents were getting separated and I had a mean teacher. Mrs. Kuber had red hair, a sharp nose (I swear it had a mole on it), and always wore navy blue. I was scared of her strictness.

My friend Jesse and I shared a four-top with two boys- Simon and a boy I don’t remember. Simon was translucent pale with steel-gray eyes and a bowl cut. He was always the last kid picked in gym. One afternoon towards the end of the school day Mrs. Kuber told us we’d be getting popsicles. I had to pee and didn’t want to spoil her good mood by interrupting her so I decided to try and hold it.

The minutes ticked like hours as we waited for the student teacher to bring the popsicles from the teacher’s lounge in the big building across the playground. My bladder was throbbing and the moment when I might have salvaged my integrity passed. I let go and peed in my chair.

Eventually, Mrs. Kuber noticed. She walked over to our table and asked who’d had an accident. With lightning speed, before anyone could say anything different, I shot my arm across the table and pointed to Simon. Mrs. Kuber stood patiently, waiting for me to cop to my accident. 

I stood my ground. I would say nothing and this would pass. My friend Jesse was nervously sitting beside me, my partner in crime, not saying what she and everyone else knew. After a minute of waiting Jesse turned on her chair and looked at me, “Laura, are you sure it wasn’t you?” I remember how gently she asked, how sweetly, how earnestly. I felt like she might have actually believed that, despite the puddle slowly expanding towards her shoes, it wasn't me who peed in my chair.

I’ll never forget that moment. It was a microsecond of believing I could actually change history. By asking that question she was inviting the possibility that maybe it wasn’t me. I seized the moment. “Yes, I’m sure,” I said, “I had to go, but I held my breath.”

I’d recently learned that holding one’s breath could stop hiccups but I’d confused it with holding pee. No one believed me. The jig was up. The gigantic pool of pee under my chair gave me away and Simon was acquitted. I had no choice but to confess to my crime. 

I don’t remember a popsicle or anything else about that day. But what is etched in my memory is the moment when Jesse offered me a tiny window of kindness that gave me hope. That question, “Laura, are you sure it wasn’t you?” gave me a way to step out of the shame I was swimming in for just a moment. 

Jesse was always kind. I’m sure she’d given that gift she gave me that day to hundreds of people along the road of her life. When I think about that moment of grace Jesse gave me almost half a century ago, I realize how much I’ve missed her too.

Freedom To vs. Freedom From

Freedom is what everyone is talking about these days. Freedom to hug, freedom to walk without a mask, freedom to go into other people’s homes, freedom to plan a vacation.

But what we don’t talk about so much is what we may have found in the absence of all of these freedoms. Pre-pandemic, my life often felt like a dresser drawer stuffed with commitments and obligations. These last twelve months have offered many of us a freedom from unconscious busy-ness and forced us to invent new life-sustaining experiences. 

For example, we created an amazing back patio with string lights crisscrossing an imaginary ceiling. We hosted friends covered in blankets and surrounded by the warmth of roaring propane heaters. We went to different people’s homes to talk around their firepits made from salvaged rocks and bricks. We took walks and sat outside in the park. We were free from planning big meals and cocktails because it wasn’t safe to eat or drink around each other. 

I started volunteering at a food bank and then at a senior center preparing meals for people, both for the experience of being around people. As a result, I met people I never would have encountered in my life before. In the hours where I wasn’t filled with business as usual commitments, I found new friendships and interests.

When you google images for “freedom” you’ll find pages of people standing on a mountain or a cliff or a rock in the middle of a river, arms extended into a “V.” And in these images, the person is almost always alone. This quintessential image for freedom-- arms outstretched, face to the heavens, joyful to be alive in one's own body in the presence of nature-- says it all. Freedom doesn't necessarily involve any other people or creature comforts. 

As we move at what seems to me like breakneck speed towards the land of freedom to (fill in the blank), I invite you to think about what in your life you have had freedom from in this last year.

I will miss creative communing. Just today I texted a friend about having an outdoor Seder for Passover and the very idea made me so happy. We’ll have to figure out how to configure ourselves around a table, how to stay warm, and how to manage the vaccinated people and the non-vaccinated people. We’ll take nothing for granted and be grateful for everything we create. 

One of my favorite parts of COVID communing is that the event always ends sooner than indoor socializing did. With outdoor socializing, it becomes cold or buggy or dark and the night naturally ends. I love this organic winding down. It’s so easy compared to the relentless social cue analysis — constantly monitoring who looks ready to go, who’s hunkering down for another piece of cake or one more round of Balderdash, whose had one too many and might say something awkward.

This last year has offered me a freedom from the obligation to keep up with social gatherings, cultural events, even school functions. It’s easy to beg off saying, “I just can’t Zoom one more time.” When we return to freedom to (fill in the blank), I fear that it will seem unkind or ungrateful to decline an invitation. After all this time, who in their right mind would say no to dinner with friends?!

This topic is on my mind a lot. It’s important. This great world shift has been a struggle that invites us to examine where we have been in the last year, where we were before that, and where we want to go in the future. It’s a rare moment in history, to experience a pandemic where our lives come to a screeching halt. We have all learned something profound. It's worth spending some time thinking about what these lessons are and taking them with us into whatever comes next. 

Your Opinion is More Important than Mine

Last week my daughter took her driver's test. She was so nervous about it. My daughter is the kind of kid who rarely stresses about school. She’s calm as a cucumber getting shots, in the dentist's chair, even getting her nose pierced, she didn’t flinch.

But with this driving test, she was a mess. She researched which driving school in our city had the highest rate of passing. On the day of the test, she begged me to please pay for another test if she failed. In the end, the highest passing school didn’t have any spots available so we went somewhere else, amping up my daughter’s belief that she would not pass the test.

I dropped my daughter off to do the paperwork and take her test and went for a walk. I got back before she and the teacher returned so I sat on some steps across from the driving school. Shortly after I saw her pull up (a little far from the curb). She and the driving teacher got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk. I could see them from afar. “Oh shit,” I thought, “that teacher is reading her the riot act. I hope she didn’t fail.”

I watched my daughter nod her head earnestly as the teacher pointed out things on her clipboard. Then Lucia spotted me and walked calmly over. “I passed,” she said, then proudly exclaimed, “95!” I wasn’t surprised. She had been ready. She was prepared. She’s a good driver.

That afternoon as my daughter sat in the driver’s seat getting ready to drive us to the grocery store, she confidently rested her right arm behind the headrest of my seat and backed down our driveway. “You seem so self-assured driving right now,” I said to her.

“I am!,” she exclaimed, “I was just thinking how much more confident I am now that someone else told me I can drive.” We talked a little bit about that, how it’s so strange that someone else’s opinion can be so much more important than our own.

Nothing had changed with my daughter’s driving skills between the time she took the test and that moment. The only shift had been in her recognition of her capacity. Before being sanctioned by an outside party (someone she’s never met and doesn’t know), she felt tentative and unsure of her driving abilities.

Just the simple blessing from someone in authority changed how she saw herself in the world. Getting a shot or a filling doesn’t require any performance. In those acts, you are a passive recipient of the process. But performing to be evaluated and scored is a whole other level. I wonder what the fallout would have been if my daughter hadn’t passed her driver’s test. Would she have internalized that message and become discouraged and deflated?

It’s wonderful to witness my daughter’s newfound confidence. She feels accomplished and deserving of this right to drive a car. I hope that as she moves through her life she’ll think about this experience and remember that, even before someone told her she could drive a car, she could do it.

Muddy Waters

Lately, my waters have felt muddied. For many months, everything felt clear. I could see down past the surface of the pond all the way down to the bottom. I could see the reflections on the water’s surface. I could dive down if I wanted, and explore the depths, or I could spend time above, exploring the world around me. In the stillness, there was the possibility to reflect on the depths of who I am and the possibilities of who I could be. 

Something happened in the past few weeks. Perhaps it was the change in tone in our country. This new president is making things happen. Everything is changing, and fast. It’s all good, but it’s unbalancing. My internal equilibrium is off. People are getting vaccinated. There is a buzz of planning and next steps in every conversation. People are talking about traveling and going back to school and backyard barbeques.

And, at the same time, spring is here. In my part of the world, spring comes after many months of rain and darkness. The simultaneous emergence of the cherry blossoms, the sunny weather, and the longer days along with the feeling of safety and security in our surroundings and hope for brighter days ahead is thrilling. And overwhelming.

In the containment of the darkness of winter and safety regulations during COVID’s peak, the world felt very small, very controlled. Now it is like Disneyland, so much to see and do and we have to do it now. 

I observe myself holding back, tentative about going on the rides, hiding from the larger-than-life Snow Whites and Daffy Ducks. It’s too much. The curly fries are too rich and the lines are too long. I crave a quiet bench in a park and a simple Tupperware of carrots with a side of peanut butter. 

All of this activity has muddied my waters. When I look down, into the pond, I cannot see anything clearly. It’s murky, particles of the unknown floating as far as I can see. And the surface is rippled from the wind in the air; I cannot see the reflection of the trees or the sky above.

I sit by the pond, this place where I once derived such comfort in recent days. I miss the clear pool of possibility. The pond feels different. It is no longer the place I could go to contemplate and reflect in the quiet and calm. I don’t recognize the muddy waters anymore and I miss the old pond.

It’s hard to reconcile this feeling of loss when so much good is happening. The muddy waters are what is bringing us back to the way our lives used to be — working outside of our bedrooms, children spending time in community again, living without fear every single day.

There is a loss. I miss my clear pond. I know that I must welcome the way this new water looks right now. I must remind myself that there will be a time when the wind dies down and the debris in the water settles. The waters are muddy now, but the pond is still there. Soon, when this shift in our world is not so new, I will be able to see into the depths of the pond again. The surface of the water will be still and clear, making way for the reflections above to show themselves again.

The 100-Day Mikvah

 

Yesterday was March 8th, International Women’s Day. All-day I saw posts on Instagram and Facebook — people raging about how women should get more than one day, happy shots of women and their mothers or daughters, posts of Kamala Harris.

I celebrate International Women’s Day every year because I believe it’s important to slow down and spend some time honoring women, the importance of feminine energy in our daily lives, our history, and our future. I also love any opportunity to create a ritual or tradition.

March 8, International Women’s Day, is also the anniversary of my father’s death. This year marked twenty-four years. I love that my father’s death day is also a day to celebrate women everywhere. My dad was a social worker and a feminist, a rare combination in his Northwest Indiana town. He was gentle and kind. Dad embodied many of the qualities that we revere in women — he was sensitive, relational, and community-minded. So it feels exactly right to celebrate this man on International Women’s Day.

On November 29th my long-time friend and I decided to jump in the lake. Then we repeated it every day. As the temperature dropped we continued. Every day I would announce what day we were on. The walkers on the path above us got to know us. “What day are you on?” they would holler down to us laughing. We laughed back, feeling like the rock stars in the lake.

One especially cold day I decided that I would definitely do this ritual until day 100. I calculated when that would be and was delighted to see that our 100th dip would fall on March 8th.

So, lover of ritual that I am, I organized an event. Anyone who wanted to could come join us to go into the lake for International Women’s Day. I wanted to share this ritual that we had been doing every day for one hundred days with other women.

My sixteen-year-old daughter and her friend joined us and one other friend. My partner and another friend came to watch and pour hot cocoa from the sidelines. All five of us entered the water and then we stayed in for a few minutes. As we stood there I felt a deep sense of meaning. The culmination of these one-hundred days, the two generations of women sharing in this ritual felt more special and significant. 

In Jewish tradition, a Mikvah is used for spiritual cleansing. Our daily trip to the lake has indeed felt like a cleansing of sorts. The ice-cold water talks to our skin like millions of little pinpricks until the pricks become big icy blankets over all the submerged parts. After standing neck-deep for a few minutes, we do the final submersion, our faces, and our whole heads. The shock on the sensitive skin of the eyelids, the ears, the nose feels like a freezing cold rebirth. 

When we come up for air a whole new conversation starts with the sky and the wind. The air is always warmer than the lake and as our bodies leave the cold water we become more of the earth than the water. We walk to our towels and robes, the air gently wicking our tingling skin, inviting it back towards warmth. 

My day has begun with this lake Mikvah for one hundred days. Today will be 101. I don’t want to stop. This ritual is a daily gift. My hope is that next year on International Women’s Day we’ll all meet again and share this tradition.