I will be posting short essays from Haven Writing Retreat alums for the next few weeks…

…in hopes that you will be inspired, and mostly so that you know you are not alone. We’re not going for talking points or even wisdom. We’re going for truth. Here is the next installment of the series.

You might consider writing your own. The only writing prompt I gave them was this: The Pandemic and Me. 800 words. Go for your truth.

I invite you to do the same! Writing is the best tool I know in the realm of preventative wellness, self-awareness, letting go, and dreaming your future alive. Writing heals. Telling our stories heals. Reading heals. I hope these essays will help heal you.

To that end, my next So Now What online Workshop will be on Sept. 13th from 10:00-3:00 MST. For more info and to register, click here.

Yours,

Laura

My Covid-19 Stargate

By Devra Lee Fishman

My makeup basket languishes on a glass shelf in my bathroom, between a jar of cotton swabs and a box of tissues. It overflows with lipstick tubes and powder blush compacts full of my color-me-beautiful corals, bricks and just the right tomato-reds. Between the Covid-19 quarantine and safety requirements of wearing a facemask – the new little black dress – these products are not only redundant but by now well past their best-if-used-before dates. I will probably never wear them again yet I cannot seem to toss them out. They are part of my Covid-19 before and my hope for a can’t –come-soon-enough after.

There is evidence all around me of a time I was free to fill up my life with objects and activities that brought me joy. Too many pairs of black shoes and boots I collected on my yearly trips to Italy crowd the floor of my closet. The blue cotton jacket, the uniform that I wore as a weekly hospice volunteer, hangs above the shoes where I left it the last time I wore it – March 3, 2020. And on my desk next to the laptop I am typing on is a pile of theatre and concert tickets for events canceled due to the Corona virus.

When news of the virus came back in March, I (well, no one really), knew how it would affect our lives. The first couple of weeks I spent at home I behaved as though we were having a snow day, braless, dressed in sweats, drinking comforting cups of tea and putting together jigsaw puzzles. I thought the storm would pass and that within a few weeks or so we would all resume our usual activities.

I know better now. We all do. Covid-19 is more like a Stargate – a portal to another place or time – than a snowstorm. And there is no point of return once a person has passed through a Stargate.

Like so many other people, I am learning to socialize and live my life from a distance. My main communities – aerobics and yoga classes, and even my hospice volunteering are now done online. Facetime and Zoom make meeting friends for a glass of wine or dinner possible. Nothing replaces spending time in the presence of a friend or loved one, but a video call makes me feel more connected than an old-fashioned telephone call, and I need to feel connected. I feel safest when I am at home and when I need to go out for an essential activity (doctor appointment, grocery shopping) I have a collection of colorful face masks that make those beautiful lipsticks irrelevant.

While I am adjusting to the new normal I feel like I am still more in survival mode than thriving mode. Every morning, after I tune into my daily meditation app, I slip on my ear buds and take a walk around the block just to feel the air on my skin for a few minutes. I spend a lot of time mourning my previous life, its reasons for dressing up, wearing lipstick and all of the activities that made it joyful and meaningful. I know this feeling of grief will pass, but when?

I’ve moved through Stargates of grief before and always came out on the other side transformed for the better. When my first marriage ended it took a while but I learned to love and trust again, and when one of my best friends died after a long battle with breast cancer I became a softened version of my former self (my friend would love knowing that). In an odd way I am grateful for both of those horrendous and heartbreaking losses.

I wonder if I will ever be grateful for all of the losses piling up from Covid-19. I wonder what the next version me will be like if and when this is all over. I wonder if it will ever be all over. I wonder if I will ever wear my favorite color lipstick (Revlon’s Toast of New York) or Italian black shoes with the faux cow hide on the heels or my hospice uniform again. And I wonder how long it will take me to get through this Covid-19 Stargate into a new, comfortable, joyful and meaningful life. If my past experiences have taught me anything, it is that I will not know I have made it all the way through a Stargate of grief until I have made it all the way through a Stargate of grief.

Devra Lee Fishman lives and writes (and finds lots of ways to avoid writing) in Falls Church, Virginia. 

I Like My Mask

by Elizabeth Pascarelli

I like my mask. Sometimes I even forget to brush my teeth. And since I am on lockdown in a foreign country, I am occasionally asking myself not very interesting philosophical questions like…Am I brushing my teeth for others or for myself ? Little nagging voices…with a New York accent…have popped up— unlike normal life…that would ask me, in a sarcastic tone: ”So…now what are you gonna do?” And: “Are you gonna wash up the dishes from last night or are you gonna make your bed first?” Even: ”You know…you’ve been wearing the same damn outfit for three months!” Things I would have done automatically before…without thinking…but now I am watching myself….narrating the day…talking and answering myself. Good god!

At first it was kind of fun. I drew faces on my masks and at 8pm…with the rest of Europe…I would blast an American rock and roll song…usually Chuck Berry…and dance on the balcony. My Spanish neighbors would join in and then we’d all applaud the workers who came around later to spray the village with disinfectant. We were bonding, I felt, uniting our two countries.

Then it all stopped…maybe they ran out of spray…but I couldn’t resume the song and dance. I would have looked like a strange foreigner.

So I set up my apartment into a kind of Montessori school…activity stations. One was for reading …another for yoga…and the utility room for painting. Even the bathroom became a make-shift spa. I could write short stories on a desk I invented by the balcony…where I could also have a cigarette and watch people go by. I soon became bored with all of that.

The little annoying voice started up again. ”Do you really want to be on a plane back to the US just to be with family that might get annoyed with you because you’re living in Spain?”

Well…no…I thought.

It continued. “Listen, stupid…this is the first time in your whole life when you don’t have to worry about where you should or could be….you ain’t going nowhere!”

Okay…Okay…I get it…I’m on lockdown…even though I hate the word…So I’ll go brush my teeth.

Elizabeth Pascarelli is an American, living and writing in Spain.