The COVID experience so far

Goddard Park, the last time I was there before it closed.

Hidden talents as revealed by COVID-19 seclusion so far:

Focaccia maker (with the last known packet of Fleischmann’s in the Western world)

Grocery launderer

Gabriel hair cutter and stylist (turns out I’m an ace barber—who knew?)

Sleeping cat annoyer

This seclusion has been very revealing of everything, including the light-hearted, but more often it shows the fears and anxieties that growl there in the background. I used to grind my teeth every night, long before the virus, though years of meditation and body awareness have helped with this more than I can say; but I woke from a quick nap yesterday with my jaw clenched tight.

Nameless, shapeless anxieties have become re-articulated in the tendons of my back. I noticed this when I was in the kitchen this morning, but this noticing is helpful—the most effective thing, I think, to do with all the feelings and sensations passing through. Maybe the most fundamental skill is to learn to witness, to allow judgment to cool down, to be easier with not-knowing and uncertainty. Bare observation is evidence of that lovely paradox that shows up in the territory between our minds and pure beingness—you accomplish something by doing nothing. Except watch.

But speaking of doing, simple witnessing isn’t by any means easy to accomplish. I don’t always have the knack, and these are unprecedented times (not unprecedented in terms of horror, but in the way of the specifics; I think we can all agree that, in general, human atrocity is perfectly predictable). Things and attitudes change daily. The entire globe is now connected in this intricate net of sickness, anxiety and (maybe) hope. New York City, beloved by so many, is roiling in a fear so palpable that it’s felt everywhere, and each day of seclusion, regardless of where you are, is a rocking between catastrophic thinking and perhaps moments of peace or the ability to witness. I have found it’s a uniquely bizarre experience, for instance, to wash a load of groceries in the kitchen sink like so many babies, but on the other hand there is food, plus soap and clean water. My husband puts his arms up toward the ceiling every day and says, “We’re alive!” and then I do this, too, and we start laughing, not because any of this is at all funny but because it’s an entirely human thing to do, especially to ward off suffering. There have been many moments when I’ve teared up or been frozen with anxiety. “We have to be grateful,” says the mechanical engineer whose scientific mind is often the counter to my literary one, but lately he is philosophical. Gratitude is the best antidote, true enough.

The parks and beaches here in Rhode Island are now closed, which is a necessary measure, but a blow to people with disabilities (and their caregivers) who need a safe place to go to be outside. Gabriel’s world gets (inexplicably, to him) smaller and smaller, though he seems to be adjusting now. Music, as ever, is the saviour, as it has been for so many years for him (us). The accessibility of vast cathedrals of jazz, big band, funk, classical, and opera is a brilliant light in this whole business; it feels like a miracle, actually, to download lists of tunes, and to hear the intricate and soaring record of musicians’ personal suffering and hope—what is jazz if not the most ingenious telling of profound hardship made wholly listenable? I think the lesson here is that the suffering isn’t repressed or shoved aside or falsely turned into a positive, but rather paid attention to—witnessed. And allowed to sing.

Gabriel in the Time of COVID-19

This photo of my son Gabriel was taken last September, in more liberated times! The last few days he’s been sick with a sinus infection as he, and we all, try to adjust to the new circumstances in which we find ourselves. His beloved day program has been closed for the time being, and so, like many people, he finds his routine upended and his circles much smaller. We are on “vacation,” but clearly something is different, and he possesses immense awareness, even if he doesn’t speak, of body language and telltale facial expressions and sheer energy. He knows, on some level, that we’re in new territory, that his parents, his brother, his caregivers, his friends and neighbours are all trying to get a grip. But none of this is something to “grip.” It’s nebulous and unknowable—precisely the qualities that the human mind tends to dislike; hence all that banging and resistance going on in there.

He has taken apart my office (his favourite place to sit) and so I’ve reorganized to better accommodate him. He likes spaciousness (how ironic) and for objects to be beyond his reach (if they’re too close, they ignite his desire to throw them; if they’re far enough away, they get to live in peace). Lately he’s been loving his usual jazz playlists, but especially Big Band and also opera (Maria Callas is a new discovery and he wants to hear her daily). Glenn Miller has been on repeat, and he likes to hold my hands and swing them while we listen to In the Mood, Chattanooga Choo Choo and the like (these are really uplifting tunes and I highly recommend). He has his shakers, bells and drum sticks, but mostly he just likes to listen. We drive to the ocean, too, and listen to music there, and sometimes podcasts, though this is clearly my choice and not his (but I figure I get to have some of my own listening in this whole affair).

The world over, people with intellectual disabilities are finding themselves confined to smaller spaces and different routines, because of something hard to define, explain or bring an end to. It is seismic, really, this adapting that we all have to do. There has to be a kind of elasticity and fluidity and you wonder where to find those things. The question hangs there palpably, “How long will this go on?” A snow day you know will end, and vacation, too. This thing, not so much. In our house, we have the added element of Gabriel’s needs, his sometimes tumultuous behaviours, but also his deeply felt presence, his utter sweetness. He is both delicious and sometimes impossible. And we have to do the impossible, for his sake and ours, of learning to float and be elastic in this new era. I was listening to Russell Brand’s recent podcast with Gabor Maté (if you want to hear cogent, sage responses to the pandemic, this is the podcast to listen to), which was brilliant and made me laugh with surprise, which is no small thing right now. Two of Gabor’s offerings that delighted were the Buddhist idea of “Relax, everything is out of control,” and the Chinese saying that a crisis is danger plus opportunity. I have a friend who calls difficult times “another fucking growth opportunity,” though this is clearly what is at work here: another growth opportunity, if an entirely unwanted and overwhelming one. So how do we sit with difficulty, how do we do the impossible?

It’s okay to have no idea. The mind can’t think its way through this. I think fully acknowledging the roar in the brain—that this seems like a shit-storm—is important (and it especially feels this way for caregivers who suddenly find themselves maxing out). It’s okay to feel perfectly, exquisitely overwhelmed—in fact, it has to be felt for it to dissolve. When I stop wrestling so much with my thoughts and resisting my resistance, I notice that that space opens up—the one beyond the mind and all our calculations and unhappiness and struggle. When I wrote my memoir, Know the Night, one of the transformative ideas that arrived toward the end was STOP STRUGGLING. It was the singular and simple lesson of that time period. My resistance had caused so much grief and wasted energy. But learning to float is hard to do, to let go, to say and actually mean, “Relax, everything is out of control.” We can’t fake it (and, as Deepak Chopra has pointed out, forced positive thinking causes more stress). Nor can we reason our way out. The one thing I’ve felt that I can do reliably is locate myself in my body, and have an awareness of my breath—but especially important is the part about being in the body, feeling that energy field. The tumult is still there, and so both of these modes are present: the expansive energy in the body and the difficult, seemingly impossible situation in which the body finds itself. The trick is to allow for both, and then it’s possible to float, at least for a moment.