Like many of you, I spent a great deal of time during the pandemic years, reaching out to others and working on building and maintaining connection in a time that threatened to unravel the already frayed fibers of our connectedness. That forged and reinforced pandemic connectedness was also balanced by solitude and natural world experiences, an exercise regime that we had not been making time for previously and a lot of cooking.
News and social media sources were rife with stories of isolation and sadness, anxiety and uncertainly. But what I found was that in the face of threat of isolation my wife and I became more connected to one another during that time, more present with people in our lives and more focused on those with whom we were engaging than we had ever been. I was no longer over-booking myself with every event, that kept me watching my phone and the time and distracted me from the joy of a deeper, more meaningful experience. I was not distractedly conversing in loud and crowded rooms or events. Kim and I were home more and enjoying the JOMO (joy of missing out).
We were connecting with friends, family and neighbors on long walks in the woods, bundled up for Wisconsin winters, sitting around a bonfire in the backyard and connecting through written letters and smaller Zoom dinner parties with friends near and far.
We connected with strangers through volunteering to deliver food and other necessities for a mutual aid food pantry created in response to the pandemic by a incredible collective of local social justice-oriented artists, serving those most impacted by sudden loss of income on Milwaukee’s south side. We delivered food that we had made to people in our own neighborhood too. We broke out of our normal routines. We were present and open in conversation about the difficulty of the time and our fears for those around us, their health and well-being. But we were also looking for what would inspire hope and resilience in our own lives and sharing that with others.
As someone who was in charge of the college freshmen art majors at my university, I devised new ways to invite students to leave their dorms and explore their community in COVID safe ways. “Friday Hikes with Joey” started in response to learning that some students had not left their dorm building in over a month. Students new to Milwaukee were afraid to leave their dorm, afraid they may get lost. Our dog Joey started coming to school with me on Fridays, where we met students who hungry for exercise, fresh air, social opportunity and some good dog therapy. From campus we explored surrounding areas of beauty, within an easy walk from campus. We hiked the ravine trails at Lake Park, and students learned about famous park designer Frederick Olmstead (designer of our park, Central Park and Prospect Parks in NYC). Students took turns walking Joey, marveled at the wildlife along the Milwaukee River Trails and talked enthusiastically with one another and with me. It was good for all of us, as teaching online, in its infancy, was certainly less satisfying for students and instructors alike.
I didn’t write blog entries during this time because I was writing letters and post cards to friends who were more isolated than I was, for whom a tactile note, a gift of food delivered to the doorstep, might inspire hope and help them to feel connected. It also made me feel connected to do the writing. As Georgia O’Keefe signed her letters “From the Faraway Nearby”, I found that I felt close to those to whom I wrote real letters. Like many we tried our hand at sour dough, started making Kombucha and Kefir. We were rich in probiotics. We practiced gratitude, feeling it, expressing it, acknowledging all that we had, as well sharing our bounty with others.
We read the news and watched, from what felt like an fairly priviledged and safe bubble, as the world succumbed to a terrible virus, as those who could, came up with new ways to live in order to survive. We watched as essential workers risked their lives daily to try to keep the world fed and cared for. Thanks to social media and creative neighbors, we watched as artists shared their music, their poetry, their ideas with strangers, with humanity, sparking connection, joy and hope internationally. Suddenly the world seemed much smaller, more united in a struggle. There were fewer strangers and lots of inspiration.
We also watched as some people, in open defiance of what was proven to be scientifically true, resisted taking precautionary measures and were fed, and themselves spread, lies about vaccine safety, masking and social distancing effectiveness, leading to the illness and death of some of their own loved ones. We watched as people who we thought knew better behaved in unimaginable ways, embracing conspiracies and endangering themselves and others as they defied science and all reason for the sake of what they claimed was freedom from mask wearing, freedom from vaccination (but not freedom from ignorance, selfishness or tragic loss). It was so strange and terrifying…that people would not consider that their freedom to go mask free or vaccine free was in fact helping the virus to develop vaccine resistant strains and spreading their potential infection farther and wider.
In the midst of this pandemic, creative projects buoyed our spirits. We bought a used cargo van and set about to convert it into a camper. This project, that had originally been something that we had planned to do when we retired, was moved to the front burner as a happy project that started in August of 2020 and while it took us nearly two years to get complete, we used it in various stages of completion for more local camping trips, beta testing and tweaking our design. We used it to visit Kim’s Michigan-based parents in a Covid safe way. We then got it completed enough to drive it to Alaska for a two-month road trip that included my family reunion in Fairbanks and lots of exploring in Southeastern Alaska. That camper opened doors to more adventures and more connectedness. It has brought us joy and has us planning more trips for the future.
When the Black Lives Matter protests started in response to George Floyd’s murder in the Summer of 2020 we opened our garage and set up banner painting stations to help the cause. With fans and open air, we could gather in small groups to paint outside. Our Art Build activities also continued smaller scale, creating free standing picketer cutouts with signs that we installed in front of the McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago for their annual shareholder meeting (working with SEIU), demanding an increase in minimum wage/salaries for their employees and safer work conditions. These actions, working together to help others, gave us hope, brought us together safely to have fun. We didn’t feel helpless. We were doing something in community with others to address at least some of the problems facing humanity.
We have a dear friend in his late 80’s whose wife died shortly after the two of them had moved into assisted living, far from the community where they had lived for 50 years. His wife’s funeral was the last event that we attended before the pandemic shut everything down. Realizing that, as a very social and creative person who was suddenly alone and grief stricken, he would need love and support, we started having video calls with him almost every evening at 7:30pm. We called it “the Allen Hour”. It lifted his spirits and ours. Those calls with him now happen once or twice a week. He has become family to us.
We were very fortunate to emerge from that time without significant loss of friends and family. We maintained our health and, actually, became healthier due to the sudden focus on doing less of the frivolous stuff and more of the meaningful, while also being more physically active. Never have we been so hydrated, limber, strong and mindful about connection.
Have we maintained those benefits and lessons learned? To a degree, yes. But once things opened up again, we were back to doing quite a bit. We are more aware of what we choose to do and how much and are able to moderate when our calendar fills and we start to put important self-care on a back burner. So, the past five years have taught us some things about the importance of community care and self-care. It taught us to not wait too long to do what we can start today.