Category: Pandemic postcards

Pandemic postcard #56: Better days

Julie Fanselow

Two years ago feels like forever, doesn’t it? Two years ago tonight, I was a few days into a complicated-but-worth-it two-week travel odyssey that saw me fly to Idaho for an early Christmas with my daughter and jet on to Chicago to spend Christmas Eve with one set of cousins and Christmas Day with the other. It was the first time in decades I’d shared Christmas with my extended family, the folks with whom I celebrated nearly every childhood Christmas. One of my cousins is no longer with us and I’m not sure when I’ll see the others again, so I’m glad I made the trip when I did.

After a perfect, unseasonably warm Boxing Day spent wandering around the Garfield Park Conservatory and the Chicago Loop — and a rare night in a downtown hotel — I met a friend for breakfast then I boarded the California Zephyr on December 27 to travel across the Plains and Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, on to San Francisco, where I spent New Year’s Eve with my brother and his husband. Jeff and I joined many others in a traditional Golden Gate Bridge walk on January 1, then on January 2, I finally flew home to Seattle. I packed a lot into that trip, and I’m glad I did, for the two Christmases since then have been strange.

I don’t have much to report as dusk falls on this fourth-shortest day of the year. For the second Christmas Eve in a row, I am awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test. Last year at this time, I had no symptoms but I had received an exposure notification, so I hunkered down for what I’m pretty sure was my first-ever solo Christmas before the negative test result finally came in late on December 25. This year, I’ve had cold symptoms since Tuesday and I’m pretty sure that’s all they are, but out of an abundance of caution, I got a PCR test the other day. I’m starting to feel better, but I’ve sadly decided to pass on the only in-person plans I had: volunteering as an usher at my church’s Christmas Eve service tonight and sharing brunch with my stepdaughter and her mom and stepdad tomorrow. I’m spending a second straight Christmas alone, but at least I had plans, unlike the person I found curled up in my building’s doorway this morning.

It’s been a hard year for many of us, to varying degrees, but I am grateful for what I have and what may lie ahead. Ten years ago today, I was sleeping on the living room couch of my house in Boise, recovering from back surgery. Over the next six months, I’d say goodbye to my dad after his long journey with memory loss and I’d move to the West Coast to start a new life. I’ve lived at seven different addresses since Christmas 2011 and I’ll likely add yet another early in the new year, but that’s another story — one I’ll share in my annual “word of the year” another post sometime soon. For now, suffice it to say that this restless soul hopes to find more lasting shelter in both the physical and emotional realms in 2022.

Meanwhile, I wish shelter for all who seek it, and I want to send along my good wishes to those of you who are still here with me. Thank you for reading Surely Joy this year, even as my posts have become less frequent and more fraught. Here’s a song about forgiveness and possibility that resonated strongly with me this time last year and that is ringing even more true in this strange, protracted season of uncertainty for our world. Stay well, and know that the light is coming back.

Update: My test result came in just before 5 p.m., and thankfully (and as I expected), it was negative. Another blessing, another sign of better days, when a head cold is all we need worry about this time of year.

Trains of thought

Julie Fanselow

“I’m taking the train to take time for my thoughts …”

I’ll never forget the first time I heard Gabriel Kahane, toward the end of 2018. I was standing in the kitchen of the house I’d shared with Tom, and Kahane was a guest on the late great radio show Live From Here. The songwriter explained how, the day after the presidential election two years earlier, he’d climbed aboard a train to ride 8,980 miles around America. The idea was to see people face to face, talk with them, turn their stories into songs, and see whether music could maybe bridge some of what divides us as a country. Transfixed by that introduction, this rail devotee eagerly sought out Kahane’s work, especially Book of Travelers, the album based on his post-election trip.

In January 2019, Kahane came to the Triple Door, my favorite Seattle club. I sat by myself at a table for two, off to the side of the room, but still feeling awkward and adrift in the small venue where I’d seen many shows with Tom. It didn’t matter; I needed to hear these songs live, and Kahane — onstage alone, with no backup band and minimal patter for the audience — seemed a bit lost at sea, too. He let the music do the talking for him, as he did later in the year on a rainy fall night at the University of Washington’s Meany Center, one of the last concerts I’d see before the pandemic.

Kahane was back at the Meany Center last Saturday, so of course I was there, seeing him for the third time on another rainy November night. He opened with a song that posed the question, and I am paraphrasing: What if this were the last show I ever get to play? More personable now, married and the father of a three-year-old, full of songs and stories of a year spent away from the Internet (the basis for his next album, due in 2022), Kahane played for 75 minutes, all of us except him masked for the duration, all of us grateful to be there hearing live music. He ended his set with the same song with which he’d begun, prefaced this time with its backstory.

It was early March 2020 and he had to take two planes to get to a small-town show. After the concert, a nice woman named Lisa drove him to his motel — nothing special, she said, except for the cows. Make sure you see the cows. The next morning, after making a waffle at the breakfast bar, Kahane looked out the window, saw 25 cows, and turned the scene into a bedtime story for his daughter: Let’s count the cows. His little girl couldn’t get enough of the story, and neither could her papa, who told it countless times during the pandemic. It put his kid to sleep, and it gave him a chance to relive that last pre-COVID show one more time.

It’s human nature to hope we haven’t experienced our last time doing something. I recently wrote a magazine story about how many of us have lacked physical contact during the pandemic, starting it with a line I penned in my journal in March 2020: What if I never get to hug anyone ever again? Twenty months ago, for someone living alone as the world shut down, that was not a rhetorical question.

Amid his new work, Kahane sang three songs from Book of Travelers. I know every note and nuance of these songs; they sustained me as no other music could in the second half of the first year after Tom died. He started with “Baedeker,” a hymn to travel and to maps, then he segued into “Baltimore,” a song about loss and reckoning. As soon as he sang the line with which I started this post, I found myself weeping softly into my mask, ambushed by the first sneaker wave of grief I’d felt in a long while, my emotions swirling past me into a present in which I’m missing both Tom and my summer companion amid a new season of overly complicated romantic geometry.

Four times during the first two years after Tom died, I took long-distance trains as a means of connecting with my memories of our life together: how we’d squeeze into a tiny Amtrak roomette, make a list of all the train songs we could think of, watch movies on his laptop, and just watch the world roll by. How we’d talk with strangers during communal meals in the dining car, holding hands beneath the table as we waited for our food. My memories and tears continued as Kahane played “Little Love,” a song about two people who hope to simply fade away together, the kind of life I wish I’d been able to experience with Tom, except he prematurely disappeared into the long gray silence.

I’m still here, vaguely restive with a reawakened desire that has left me feeling lonelier than ever for a specific set of arms. I could use some time on a train.

Fortunately, I’ll soon be climbing aboard the southbound Coast Starlight for a 23-hour ride to California and my family’s Thanksgiving gathering. I could make the same journey in a few hours by air, but I’d rather take the train to take time with my thoughts, to be in motion while sitting still, to be rocked to sleep, and to be grateful for all the experiences that I may or may not have again.

This week’s videos are of “Baltimore” and “Baedeker.” You can learn more about Gabriel Kahane and his music here. (There’s a lot to know.) Enjoy, and in case I don’t get back here before November 25, happy Thanksgiving, and thanks for reading Surely Joy.

Pandemic postcard #55: Booster club

Julie Fanselow

A story in this morning’s Seattle Times noted how this city is apparently the most stressed-out major metro in the United States, with more than 54 percent of folks here telling a U.S. Census Bureau survey team that they felt “nervous, anxious, or on edge” for at least several days during the preceding two weeks. Reporting the story, Gene Balk noted that the Census Bureau has only been asking the question since the pandemic began, so it’s hard to know whether this is a new development or a long-standing one, but we’ve ranked either number one or number two in surveys taken since July 2021.

Balk deals in data, yet he noted, “This is purely anecdotal, but I see a tremendous number of Seattleites masked up even when they’re walking outside,” at “extremely low risk of contracting the virus.” I’ve noticed this, too, and it’s very strange. Even with COVID-19 cases dropping, I get why we need to keep masking up in stores and on transit; I’m fine with that, it makes sense, and I’ll be wearing a mask on any bus ride or flight I take for the foreseeable future. But at this point — at least for healthy, vaccinated people — masking up outdoors in uncrowded settings seems like so much virtue-signalling hygiene theater, which is actually a very Seattle thing. Lighten up, folks.

My lax attitude toward masking up does not extend to the excellent news that many of us are now eligible for COVID-19 booster shots. On October 21, the CDC authorized boosters for all people 18 and older who’d received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago. I was getting a flu shot when the news broke, so I decided to give my arm a rest for a bit, but I signed up online for a vaccination slot at a local pharmacy late last week. It was such a cake walk compared to the months of waiting for my first shot last spring.

When I showed up last Friday, I was prepared to get a J&J booster because I thought, as a healthy 60-year-old, that’s all I could get. But the pharmacy tech said no, I could have whatever I wanted, so I got a Moderna booster, and I now feel like I have the best possible chance at continuing to keep the bugs at bay (or to have a mild case if I wind up a “breakthrough” statistic). As the National Institutes of Health found in a study this summer, J&J recipients who got a Moderna booster saw a 76-fold jump in antibodies that neutralize the coronavirus, the best outcome of all the combinations studied.

All gain, no pain: I had a sore arm for about a day after the shot and that was it, but even people who report losing a day or two to side effects from the vaccine say it’s totally worth it to know they’re protected against serious illness. Meanwhile, many Americans are still holding out on getting this protection, but it’s good to know that their numbers continue to dwindle — not because they’re getting sick and dying of COVID, though that is tragically still happening, but because they’ve decided it makes no sense to remain unvaccinated. Whether we continue to mask up indoors or roll up our sleeves for a shot, we’re all looking out for one another.

As I’ve written before, fear seems to be at the heart of so much of what ails our country these days, and fear has certainly driven much of our response to a pandemic that is running on far longer than it needed to. The trick is to identify what we truly need to fear and focus on what we can do most effectively to mitigate those risks so we can fearlessly embrace everything else life has to offer.

A note about this week’s video: I found this one while searching for a good take of Josh Ritter’s song “Long Shadows,” which — along with Dan Hicks’ “I Scare Myself” — was going through my head as I composed this post. It’s a one-take video shot on an iPhone! Very cool. As I mentioned in my last dispatch, I’ve been on a novel-reading tear this fall, and Josh’s new book The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All was a real treat. He is a renaissance man in a band full of them. Enjoy.

Summer reading report 2021

Julie Fanselow

It’s Labor Day, the unofficial close of summer, and the season’s passage feels especially acute this year. We’ve had a summer, but it has seemed at turns precious and precarious, fulsome and fleeting. There’s a chill in the air many mornings and a few leaves are turning, and I am nowhere ready to trade my T-shirts and shorts for sweaters and jeans.

Tonight is also the start of the Jewish High Holy Days. Last fall, I signed up for Do You 10 Q, which helps participants reflect on life’s biggest questions, including ones that have loomed larger than usual for most of us during the pandemic. Given the vicissitudes of the past year-and-a-half, I’m trying more than ever before to be in and of the moments in which I find myself. This feels a little harder than it was a year ago, when life was less full and less complicated, but also more important as new opportunities and relationships emerge. This is a too-long way of saying I haven’t done as much reading this summer as I did in 2020, but I did read several good books — and interestingly, they’ve mostly been by or about girls and women finding their power and their strength. I’ll recap a few of them here.

I started with The Girl Who Threw Butterflies, a slim middle-grades book that I impulse-bought at the Columbus UU church on my last trip to Ohio back in 2017. Mick Cochrane writes of Molly Williams, an eighth-grade knuckleball pitcher who wants to play on the boys’ team. It’s a good little baseball book, and it’s also about friendship and how our parents never really leave us. It’s funny how long I carried it around, through several moves, before I decided it was time to read it. I’m glad I did.

Early in the summer, I signed on to update my Idaho Off the Beaten Path guidebook for a 10th edition, so next up were two books set in the state. The first one, Daredevils, is a novel by Shawn Vestal. Set in the 1970s, it’s kind of about Evel Knievel and kind of about Loretta, a rebellious Mormon teenager. I recognized many of the places and characters in this story, which made it a fun blend of identification and escape.

Speaking of escape, years ago, while driving through a polygamist town on the Arizona-Utah border, I saw a little girl walking down the street and felt seized with a desire to liberate her from her fate. Daredevils reminded me of that — as did Educated, Tara Westover’s memoir of a fundamentalist-end times upbringing in Idaho, not so far from where I lived. It was a hard book to read; I had to put it aside several times, appalled by the mental and physical abuse Westover endured. Ultimately, though, Westover learns that she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and that knowledge helps set her free.

In late July, I traveled super-light on a solo trip to Alaska, but I made room in my pack for one book (which I’d picked up at the wonderful Bonners Books in North Idaho a few weeks earlier for that express purpose). Tisha is, as its subtitle says, “the wonderful true love story of a young teacher in the Alaskan wilderness,” but lest you think that gives the whole thing away, it doesn’t. Robert Specht’s as-told-to book is also a story about active antiracism on the early 20th-century frontier, and it’s yet another story of a girl growing into womanhood and learning that she is capable of handling whatever life throws her way.

That’s a lesson we keep learning, too, no matter what our age or gender. In Mud, Rocks, Blazes, Heather “Anish” Anderson was well into adulthood when she attempted to set a speed record on the Appalachian Trail, and even though she’d already won fame and acclaim for her extreme hiking exploits, she continued to harbor self-doubt. My main takeaway from Anderson’s book (as from my peripatetic journeys into Buddhism) is that everything is temporary, so relish the moments, keep going, and keep practicing gratitude at every turn.

I’ll end with a book that I’ve been dipping into all summer — one I finally decided to buy after renewing my library copy several times (and buying a copy for my daughter), one that, should I ever have a grandchild, I would hand to her to say, “Here, this is what it was like.” There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love is a book of essays about the collision of pandemic, climate havoc, police brutality, and the possibility of change. Most were written in the summer of 2020 but still resound today, such as this from Héctor Tobar, who evokes ash falling over Los Angeles: ash from wildfires and protests, ash through which anthropologists will someday sift to try and understand this confusing epoch “in some future age, when justice reigns.”

All but one of the links above are to my online bookstore, The Optimist, where you can buy a book and support both my work and that of independent bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Win-win-win. I’ll also put in a plug here for one not-quite-yet-a-book that I had the good fortune to read as copy editor earlier this year. One Heart With Courage is Teri Rizvi’s collection of essays that spans decades and continents, a timely and timeless book that details Teri’s blended Pakistani-American family, the power of faith, and the beautiful bonds of lifelong friendships. (Teri and I met at Ohio University in 1979, part of a group of friends that has endured all these decades.) The book is coming October 1, and you can pre-order it now. Finally, here’s a very early link to the next edition of Idaho Off the Beaten Path (even though I’m still writing it!) and another to my 2020 summer reading list. Be well, and happy reading.

Tradeoffs

Julie Fanselow

Hello, world. This is me, poking my head up for what now seems to be a monthly dispatch. It’s hard to believe I was writing weekly pandemic postcards until a few months ago. It’s difficult to fathom I’ve just begun volume #5 of my “pandemic journal,” the notebook I write in almost daily (though that, too, has become a less-regular practice this summer).

So here we are. I want to talk a little about tradeoffs.

Tradeoff number 1: My new upstairs neighbor threw in a load of laundry at 11:30 last night. I’d been sleeping a while, but the thumping woke me up. The neighbor seems to be up all night, so I guess they work a swing shift and probably get to bed around the time I wake up–but I still hear the floors creaking at 6:30 a.m. as I write this, so who knows? Then there’s my improbably loud refrigerator, which runs about 30 minutes every hour. I hoped I’d be used to it after four months, but it’s still annoying, especially in 499 square feet.

Ah, but I like this apartment, especially its east-facing windows and sliding glass door out onto the tiny fire-escape-sized balcony, where I sit and read or listen to music, and where the hummingbirds have been gathering all summer. I’ve enjoyed its evening cool during our heatwaves, and the low-angled light will warm my apartment this winter. I value the fact I’m a quick stroll to the bus stop and the grocery store, yet within a few blocks, I can access miles of more ambitious walking terrain where the city blends into the suburbs and fat blackberries are now ripe for the picking. It’s a tradeoff: the realities of urban living.

Tradeoff number 2: The pandemic is still very much with us, and like most people who chose to be vaccinated, I’ve lost patience with the arguments of those who’ve opted to keep the virus spreading. At the same time, I know that no good comes of castigating people for their doubts and fears, so I’m opting, as usual, to give them grace. I do know that I will live my life as the delta variant runs rampant. I’m masking up again indoors, but I never saw the need for outdoor masking a year ago and I don’t now, unless you’ve chosen not to get the jabs. I’ve been traveling and will continue to do so, and for sure I’ll take that booster shot just as soon as I can get it, thank you.

It sounds like we may all be destined to get the delta variant, vaccinated or not, though it is much worse if you’re not. I’ve finally heard of the first breakthrough case among two people I know personally; they’ve had flu-like symptoms for a week, but as vaccinated people, they’re pulling through. I mostly fight despair over my relatives whose faith-based fear causes them to doubt science, and over the plight of children who have little protection as they go back to school. It didn’t have to be this way, but it is what it is. I’m grateful we had a few months of relative freedom from COVID earlier this summer. It’s been nice to go maskless at the ballpark, where I love to give fans a welcoming smile. It’s been delightful to get to know my new companion, to hold hands and hug and kiss without worrying too much about making each other sick. Yet it seems likely we’ll all need to be vigilant over this thing for a lot longer than any of us had hoped.

Tradeoff number 3: I don’t know what I want to write about Afghanistan and the resurgence of the Taliban. My country has been involved in Afghanistan for decades, but never with a clear, cogent mission. People — in this case, the Afghani people, working toward a shared destiny and the quest for human rights — need to hold each other to account. Just as we can’t beat a virus if people don’t accept shared moral responsibility, there are limits to what one country can do for another.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. By the way, if you get these dispatches via email, my previous post from about three weeks ago seemingly never went out that way, so you can read it here. And if you’d like to get future dispatches via email (since I post so rarely these days), you’ll find a link to sign up elsewhere on this page.

Be well and don’t despair. There is much good to celebrate, even amid this unsettled, uncertain season.

Pandemic postcard #54: Postscripts

Julie Fanselow

When I wrapped up my series of 52 weekly posts a month ago, I said I’d write when I had something to say. Sixteen days ago, I wrote that I’d decided to move–which is mostly what I’ve been doing since then, although I’ve also managed to do a few other things. So here’s an update.

My new place is good. I moved two-and-a-half-miles and I am back in the neighborhood where I first landed in Seattle when I arrived here in 2013. At that point, I chose Lake City for its proximity to Tom and his suburban home a short bus ride away, but also for its affordability and diversity. I quickly grew to love Lake City for its human-scale character, and for the way, a couple of blocks off the gritty main drag, the streets feel nearly rural–perfect for the sort of aimless walks I enjoy each morning. I’m having a good time getting reacquainted with my new-old neighborhood, and I’ll write more about that in my next another post.

Here on the courtyard side of my new complex, I’ve mostly found the quiet I seek–though who knew a brand-new refrigerator could run so loudly, that people sometimes fly drones at the exact treetop level of my balcony, and that dogs (who may outnumber people here) like to bark at all hours. I hear one howling now, though that’s actually a much nicer complement to the birds’ dawn chorus than the staccato yips I hear around midnight. I had a few moving-in hiccups, including a minor water leak that the property manager swiftly addressed. She didn’t know about the drones, though. No place is perfect, but this place will do. I have the same sublime morning light I enjoyed at the last place, and a little more room, and a neighborhood I already know and like.

What else is new? I wrote five weeks ago about my then-uncertain prospects of getting vaccinated anytime soon, as a healthy 59-year-old in a state where there was then no timetable for anyone under 65 getting their shots. By early April, Washington state (spurred by leadership in the other Washington) had finally announced that everyone under 60 would be eligible on April 15, so I’d been prepared to wait a looooong time for my first jab–and likely not be fully vaccinated until well into May. But then, on the very day I gave notice that I’d leave my former apartment, I got an email from the property managers there noting that a mobile clinic would be on site to offer the one-and-done Johnson & Johnson vaccines that Friday. Everyone was welcome. So just like that, I got my shot. Of course, a few days later, the J&J “pause” was announced, but as a post-menopausal woman, the news was a mere stress blip on my moving-focused radar. I am grateful to be vaccinated; I tucked my CDC card into my passport, for it represents the same kind of freedom and sense of possibility. It’ll still be a while before I go abroad again, but it won’t be another full year.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken one more step back into life as I knew it pre-pandemic. Last Wednesday, 13 months to the day since I’d last seen a film in the theater, I returned to my favorite movie house and saw Minari. I was the only person there for the late-afternoon matinee, but I left my mask on anyway. That was weird, but it was delightful to see a movie on the big screen. Four days later, I returned to watch Nomadland, this time with a handful of other folks. (Although I’d already seen it twice on Hulu, I couldn’t pass up a chance to see its gorgeous cinematography of the American West in widescreen splendor.)

Yet more signs of spring: I am going to a ballgame today–I have one of about 9,000 tickets to see the Mariners and Dodgers play from socially distanced seating–and I return to my ballpark ushering job next week. A friend has invited me over for a small dinner gathering of five fully vaccinated friends this weekend, and I was delighted to be able to say, yes, I’ll be there.

Best of all, just a few weeks from now, I will be on a road trip to see my daughter for the first time since last July and to hug her for the first time since December 2019.

It won’t get any better than that.

We haven’t left the pandemic behind yet, but with fans in the stands and newly vaccinated folks reuniting every day, it feels like we’re on the way.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device).

Pandemic postcard #53: Moving right ahead

Julie Fanselow

This Easter morning, I’d planned to be packing my suitcase for a journey to the Deep South, to see two of the only four states I haven’t yet seen. I was going to visit my friend Eileen in New Orleans, drive from Selma to Montgomery for a few days of reflection, and wind up on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Instead, I am packing boxes to move a week from tomorrow.

It’s been a difficult Lent. Right now, things are blessedly quiet because it is Sunday. But tomorrow morning, the crew on the light rail extension project will fire up a generator that will drone on 24/7 until next Friday evening, sometimes accompanied by beeping and scraping during the night-shift work and always with a low-level vibration that seeps into my home and my bones. This has been going on since January, but it’s only been in the past few weeks that I have realized what a toll it has been taking on me.

Worse, I haven’t been able to get a good answer on how much longer it will continue. Another month, perhaps, or maybe a year. The noise level increased last week, when another construction project started to the north. I’ve found myself unable to sleep well, unable to think straight with the constant clamor. Meanwhile, COVID cases are going in the wrong direction and I’m still weeks away from getting a vaccine. The truth hurts, and the truth is it probably is not a good idea to travel cross-country on a non-essential trip.

So in the last week, I made two decisions: I’d cancel my (fortunately refundable) trip plans and I’d use my vacation time to move. The good news is it’s a renter’s market here in Seattle and I was quickly able to find a new place. I’ll pick up the keys in a few days and I’ll have most of my stuff there a week from tomorrow. I’m reminded anew how it is beautiful to live a simple, streamlined life. (Of course, I talked this over with the property manager at my current place, who gave me her blessing.)

I’m a little sad at having to leave this little apartment I’ve had since February 2019. There was a lot to like about it. I chose this place with a gut feeling it would work well for me, which it did — until it didn’t.

I’ve written before about how it’s good to be able to pivot, and how there is rarely such thing as a final decision. I am heading back to the familiar neighborhood I first called home in Seattle, to another snug studio that would have been out of my price range before the pandemic. I look forward to staying more than two years, if the rent stays reasonable.

Who knows? Maybe this rolling stone will gather some moss. Hope springs eternal, and more will be revealed. Here’s to the spirit of Easter, of renewal, and of rolling away the big rock when it’s time to make a change.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you like what you see, feel free to hit the tip jar.

Pandemic postcard #52: Last in a series (for now)

Julie Fanselow

One year ago tomorrow, I wrote the first of what has become a year’s worth of dispatches from our pandemic year. Although I’ve been blogging since 2003, I’d never been especially faithful about posting here at Surely Joy, but that changed last March. “I am going to write here every Friday, as I am able,” I said a week later — and I have. (Well, sometimes, I’ve posted on Thursday or Saturday. Close enough!)

We’ve all been marking anniversaries this month: the last time we went to an office, a classroom, a concert, or a religious service. The last unmasked visit with a friend. The last time we got to see someone who is no longer with us. So much lost. And yet so much gained, too, in understanding and perspective as we’ve navigated what Sophie Gilbert recently described in The Atlantic as “our unholy era of perpetual March.”

This is my last weekly pandemic postcard; I’m going to return to posting here when I feel I have something to say. As I conclude this year’s worth of weekly musings, I’d like to leave you with an exercise you can do to mark the end of your year in the pandemic, something I am borrowing from my friend Laura, who suggested it on her blog earlier this month. Laura described re-reading Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning and seeing anew a passage about how we store memories, “the full granaries of the past” into which we bring the harvest of our lives: “the deeds done, the ones loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”

Laura writes, “The passage from Frankl’s book prompted me to begin a list of things I have done during this pandemic year, which has also been a time of change and loss in a different way. I have often felt unfocused and wondered where the days have gone. Have I lost them?” She continues, “My list included everything from caring for my husband post surgery to writing every morning (finally) to holding yoga practice with friends in my front yard. I quickly realized, this wasn’t a list of accomplishments, but rather a list of experiences. I had so many valuable memories that I quickly ran out of room on the page.”

At this time last year, we all had many ideas on ways we could bring meaning to a time that seemed devoid of any sense. We thought we might have a few weeks of isolation and weirdness, so most of us felt compelled to use it wisely. Then time folded in on itself; weeks became months and months became a year and here we are. Forget everything you didn’t do (or that you didn’t do as much as you had hoped). Think about what you’ve done — your storehouse of experiences and memories. Make a list or a drawing or a collage to capture it. Maybe write a letter to yourself to read a year from now.

I’d also love to leave you with these words, which I recently read in Creative Care, a book by Anne Basting. She writes, “Happiness or joy can spring from immediate pleasure in the moment. Meaningfulness, on the other hand, needs more cooks and more time to cook.”

This past year, we’ve all been part of creating something the world has never seen — a stew that has been seasoned by tears, laughter, despair, resilience, and hope. The kettle is still simmering; we’ll need to stir it from time to time.

We may never know when it’s done, but I still look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. A special thanks to these people who offered support via my Patreon page over the past six months: Natalie, Jeff and Kevin, Rebecca, Laura, Marge and Lew, Jim and Kitty, David and Carrie, Chris and LeAnne, Anita, Jan, Nancy, Marianne, Joanne, Victoria, Tara, Scott, Kevin, Felicia, Eileen, Linda, Karen, and Mari. If you enjoy my writing, you can continue to support it via sharing my posts, hitting the tip jar, or buying a book. And elsewhere on this page, you’ll see a place where you can sign up to get Surely Joy via email when I write again — which I will. See you again soon.

Pandemic postcard #51: Waiting my turn

Julie Fanselow

It’s sometime in April, and I’m in line outside the stadium field house that has recently opened as Seattle’s mass vaccination site. Nurses are standing by with tens of thousands of single-dose Johnson & Johnson shots newly arrived from the feds, and I hold a sliver of hope that my silver hair will confer an advantage in securing one of these coveted vaccines. I easily pass through the entrance, and my excitement builds as I near the station where volunteers are verifying eligibility.

The woman at the sign-in table glances at me, starts the paperwork and asks for my driver’s license. She frowns as she sees that, despite a mane of graying hair, I am a few months shy of my 60th birthday. A few more questions reveal that I live alone and do my non-essential work from the safety of my computer, that I am not a smoker, and that I have no serious health conditions.

Turns out I’m still not eligible for a vaccination, and it remains unclear when I will be. “Maybe by late May?” the volunteer muses. I stifle an urge to cry as I turn for the exit. I have plans to visit my daughter over Mother’s Day for only the second time in more than a year. Will I still be unable to hug her?

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I didn’t feel any vaccine envy until last Saturday, but it hit full force for me that day. First, I saw a friend’s Facebook story reveal that he’d secured a vaccine as a teacher. He’s in his 30s and teaches English as a foreign language — online. If anyone questions his eligibility, I guess he can argue that maybe he’ll get an in-person job soon. Later in the day, I learned that two family members had also received their first doses of the Moderna vaccine. Their situations merited legitimately getting the shots despite their tender ages (26 and 55), yet I still felt twinges of jealousy.

Then on Tuesday, the CDC announced that vaccinated people can now safely socialize together indoors without masks. I’ve signed up to write thank-you notes to people who take part in my church’s annual pledge drive, and within hours of the CDC announcement, the organizer sent an email inviting people to her home for an indoor note-writing party next week. As I sent my regrets, I felt another pang of loss and a preview of the limbo that we last-to-be-vaccinated folks will endure this spring as social gatherings ramp up among the protected.

It’s still the early days. As I write this, 19 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine to fight COVID-19, and one in 10 are now fully vaccinated. I’m genuinely happy for people who are managing to get the shot, and it does look like the pace of vaccinations is quickening. But I also know that, due to my age, self employment, and lack of risk factors, I will likely be waiting a long time. It’s not always easy to make peace with that, but at least it’s a short-term situation, and certainly shorter than the year I’ve already endured.

Our priorities as a society seem clear and indisputable: vaccinate older folks and people of color, because they’ve been hit hardest by the coronavirus’s lethality. Beyond that, it gets a bit fuzzier. People under 65 with underlying health conditions need the vaccine, but that’s a wide category, subject to squishy interpretation and self identification. We need to give people the benefit of the doubt and honor those who feel they can’t wait, especially since a constellation of factors may be in play.

How about a 60-year-old with minor health issues who is caring for an aging parent? How about a 35-year-old who has been housebound for a year with an immune disorder? These seem like no-brainer situations. Get them their shots, stat. Then again, how about younger people who have mild health issues? And who is most essential in the vast category of essential workers? I’d put front-line healthcare personnel and grocery store workers at the front of the line, followed by teachers so we can open in-person learning. But hairstylists and health club employees? Maybe, but it gets murky.

I volunteer twice a week as an online English teacher, and there is no way I’d stretch that fact into a qualifying condition since I can’t catch COVID on Zoom. On the other hand, I also volunteer a few times a month at a food bank, and it was after such a stint that I received word in December that I may have been exposed to the virus. (I quarantined, and I tested negative.) I understand the food bank’s full-time staff may soon be eligible for vaccination, and they should be. But what about those of us who drop in on occasion? Although it doesn’t seem right to push us forward in the queue, I could reasonably argue that I might expect to earn a few bonus points toward eligibility via this moderately risky unpaid work. For now, though, I’d rather my shot go to the older woman volunteering beside me who hasn’t been able to get an appointment.

There are stand-by lists aimed at distributing unclaimed vaccinations so they don’t go to waste. People sign up and get alerted by text if a shot is available and they can immediately go get it. Intrigued, I checked to see if such a program is available in Seattle. It is, but only for people 65 and up. Then there’s the phenomenon of people traveling to places with fewer restrictions in order to get their shots. Alaska is one of the only four states I haven’t yet seen, and everyone 16 and older there is now eligible for the vaccine. Hmmmm … like many of us, I can work from anywhere these days … but I guess you actually need to prove that you live there. Go figure.

It’s human nature to want to give ourselves the best shot at life. Eventually, there will be enough vaccine for everyone who wants it, and it sounds like that time is now mere months away. After a year without hugs and unmasked human contact, my vaccination can’t come soon enough. But I’ll wait my turn, hoping that the people who truly need this protection are getting it the soonest. I’ll also try to remember that my place near the end of the line is the result of my relative youth, reasonably good health and no small measure of privilege and good luck — and for all these things, I am grateful.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you’d like to support my work, please hit the tip jar. Thank you.

Pandemic postcard #50: Help along the way

Julie Fanselow

There are plenty of reasons to cheer as the Senate seems poised to pass the latest — and let’s hope final — pandemic stimulus package, from ramping up the vaccination campaign to cutting child poverty in half to offering help with daycare costs so parents can get back to work. Personally, I am glad because I’ve already spent my next stimulus check.

I didn’t wake up the other day planning to buy a new laptop. But after a few weeks of increasingly sluggish performance, a Microsoft warning that I could no longer update my cloud-based Word software was the nudge I needed to replace Tom’s late-2011 model MacBook (which itself had come out of the closet to replace the 2013 Mac desktop that had hemorrhaged on me last year). With luck, I will get nearly a decade of use from this nimble new machine. Meanwhile, I’m marveling at the speed with which I’m opening and saving files.

It definitely feels like we’re accelerating out in the world, too. And much as it helped to have spring arrive just as we were locking down last March, the longer days and warming temperatures are welcome harbingers of better times ahead. But we’re not out of the dark winter yet, despite what certain governors would like to think. Ask the essential workers who haven’t yet been vaccinated as variants of the virus continue to spread, or grocery store staff working hazardous jobs for $10 an hour, or the kids who are eager to return to school before fall. Ask the folks in Jackson, Mississippi, who haven’t had water to drink or even flush their toilets for three weeks.

We’ve learned a lot of lessons this past year. One is that official inaction kills people, as it did with weeks of insistence that the virus would magically disappear. Another is that government can do a lot of good, as it did with the first round of stimulus relief, passed last March like the emergency bill that it was. Yes, the national debt is piling up, but with near-zero interest. Economic activity will replenish the coffers as we spend money and pay taxes. It’s smart to go big, especially to help the littlest and the least among us.

Self-sufficiency is a myth that deserves to die, and it sometimes feels like a more humane form of capitalism may be within sight, if only we can learn the lessons of 2020. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a country where people didn’t need to choose between food and medicine? Where people have help — via a reasonable minimum wage, for example — affording rent and child care, not just when emergencies happen, but to prevent them?

The government rescued me and millions of others last year with the first-ever unemployment assistance for freelancers, and now it has helped me replace the main tool of my wordsmithing trade. I am happy to have my first new computer in nearly a decade. Thank you, Uncle Sam. I’ll pay you back soon, I promise.


Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you’d like to support my work, please hit the tip jar. Thank you.