Category — Uncategorized

I’ve always baked bread. As in, for the last 20+ years, I’ve baked bread about once or twice a week. I am both amused and confused by the number of people posting the bread they’re baking online, seemingly for the first time. Except for this week because it’s still Pesach. This week, I’m totally jealous of all the bread. I want bread.

*******

I’ve had standing video lunches or phone dates with several people all year. It started with my cousin. We used to get lunch together once a month. When she moved, we started holding our lunches via Skype. Because we don’t need to travel to the restaurant, we decided to do them every other week instead of once a month. We just grab our lunches and sit in front of the computer camera, and it feels like we’re together in the same room.

Due to the success of those lunches, I set up video lunches with a few friends. We’ve clearly been keeping them because they are how everyone is holding lunch dates. So I nod to all the other people who have discovered the joy of the Zoom lunch.

*******

What has changed:

Outside clothes vs inside clothes. We change the moment we step into the house, even if we’ve only gone on a short walk and haven’t seen a single person.

Face masks. I am pretty reluctant about putting anything on my face, including make-up. At first I was resigned to never leaving the house if it meant wearing a mask. But I wanted to drop off my parent’s groceries so I could see them from afar. So I put on my first face mask, a homemade one that looked like a polartec maxipad.

Disinfecting phones. For someone who loves to clean—even down to my normal bleaching-of-the-doorknobs—I never thought to disinfect my phone. And I use it while I’m out of the house so… Needless to say, I have begun disinfecting everyone’s phone on a regular basis, even if the only time it leaves the house is to go on a walk.

What hasn’t changed / has changed for you?

I made a list in my bullet journal of all the things one needs to have on-hand if there is ever another extended shelter-in-place. We were mostly in good shape due to my natural state of emergency preparedness. (For example, I carry a first aid kit on me whenever we leave home. Why? I don’t know. But it seems like a good idea.) We won’t be in great shape if this goes on for another three months or more, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the list I’m keeping and my obsession with everyone’s hair.

ChickieNob and I both have long hair. We were overdue for a haircut before this, but it’s not like you’d know with a quick glance. We also have the ability to tie up our hair and hide the fact that it’s a mess right now. I’ve never dyed my hair, so there will not be a shocking colour reveal. All in all, the women are in good shape.

But Josh and Wolvog both have short hair, and their need for a haircut was growing clearer by the second. By the millisecond. They were long overdue for a haircut.

So I watched haircut tutorials on YouTube—the comb-over-scissors technique looked do-able while the clipper action was way beyond my abilities. I’m not saying that I could shape it or make it look good. But I could make it look shorter. Josh bought me a pair of hair cutting scissors and a comb that looked like the one owned by the barber in the video. I was ready for this.

Until he sat down in the backyard, a towel around his shoulders.

It is really nerve-wracking to have someone else’s hair in your hands. Even though he reassured me that it was just hair, it would grow back, I didn’t want to doom him to weeks of awkward Zoom calls. But I took a deep breath and started snipping. I will never be able to get a job doing this for a living, but it didn’t look terrible. It was still a little too long, but it definitely looked neater. He said we’d try again next week and keep going shorter.

The Wolvog has told me there will never be a day—not even if this goes through next fall—when he allows me to try something with his hair. Apparently too long is a better option than anything his mother could do.

He may be correct.

Remember how I told you that I won an advance copy of Sophie Hannah’s upcoming book (it comes out in May), Happiness, a Mystery? It was the perfect book to read during this really tumultuous, unhappy time. Not only is it a fun read—Hannah is like a verbal cup of tea—but she gives you plenty of ways of viewing the external factors that affect your happiness.

And one of them should fit your world view.

So one of the most interesting questions she poses in the book comes on page 106. She tells the story of her dog, Brewster, and a person (called Charles) who keeps risking the dog’s death by leaving her front door open on purpose. Before she got the dog, Charles closed the front door 100% of the time. After she got the dog, Charles started leaving the door open regularly, and she has proof that it is a conscious decision to leave the door open and not forgetfulness.

She talks about the line between the person who deliberately murders a dog and the person who sets up a situation where a dog could die. While people fall emphatically on the side of “that is wrong” when it comes to dog murder and would stop seeing Charles if he shot the dog, they make up a lot of excuses so they can remain friends with Charles even when given proof that he is setting up a dangerous situation for the dog. They’re willing to forgive his intentions right up until he steps over the line into out-and-out murder.

It made me think about behaviour in our current situation, and the line between forgivable/explainable vs. unforgivable. Where we make excuses even though we know it’s the wrong thing, and where we’re not willing to make excuses anymore.

Anyway, I’ll have a review of the book in the March reading roundup mid-month, but I wanted to throw that thought out there because I’ve been chewing it over in my mind.

This article on grief was making the rounds about a week ago. It’s a great read, in case you somehow missed it. The article begins with this thought: What you’re feeling is grief, and “if we can name it, perhaps we can manage it.”

Manage it. It’s what you’ve been doing since your infertility diagnosis. The difference being that you were alone, navigating the loss of normality while life continued on around you, and now everyone is in the same boat. Before, you were navigating anticipatory grief alone, and now everyone is navigating it, too.

“Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain.”

It made me wonder if we’ll emerge from this experience a more understanding society. Will we be able to reference COVID-19 and say, “What I’m feeling is anticipatory grief” about something else, and everyone will nod and say, “Oh, I get it.”

In fact, one of his recommendations is to “stock up on compassion.” To understand that someone is not themselves and is in a stressful moment and to have a little grace and leniency if they’re not on their best behaviour.

But maybe my favourite part of the article is this:

The truth is a feeling that moves through us. We feel it and it goes and then we go to the next feeling. There’s no gang out to get us. It’s absurd to think we shouldn’t feel grief right now. Let yourself feel the grief and keep going.

This too shall pass. Right? I need to believe that.

Pesach begins on Wednesday night. I am not feeling it this year. I was making the soup stock for the matzo ball soup a few weeks ago, and it felt like playing violin on the deck of the Titanic. What is the point in continuing to take part in certain rituals when the rest of them—especially ones that mean a lot to me like seeing my parents—are null and void?

Yet here I am, spending the weekend engaged in Pesach cleaning. I’m not doing a complete flip of the house (where you get rid of all non-Pesach food) because there is zero chance I’ll be able to get another box of pasta again in the near future. But I’m doing the cleaning the best I can. Making the meal. Telling Linus that he can’t have the parsley until the end of the second seder.

I feel like I have such a tenuous connection to the old normal. Skipping a holiday means snipping another thread.

I think many will understand this, even if you’re not Jewish. It’s hard to NOT celebrate a holiday, even if celebrating the holiday is hard. I imagine that it is hard to skip Christmas or even change Christmas if you’ve built traditions over the years. Even if celebrating Christmas is equally hard.

I think it will be okay. It will be different and a little sad and I’ll probably end up crying at the seder table. But… that’s just Pesach 2020. Next year will be better.