A Look On The Lighter Side: Lessons from our year of living virtually

Judy Epstein

It has often been said that if mothers truly remembered all the pain of childbirth, every one of us would be an only child.

That, I think, is what will also happen with most of our memories from this past year of Coronavirus — we will erase every memory we can. It’s already happening to me! So here, before they’re all gone, are a few things I want to remember.

This time a year ago I remember thinking that buying four dispensers of hand soap should be plenty. I splurged on five pounds of my favorite coffee (Starbucks Morning Joe, which was hard to find), and every bit of dark chocolate I could lay my hands on. But somehow I missed the boat on toilet paper, only thinking of it after it had disappeared from store shelves. I will forever be grateful to the friend who shared her big-box-store delivery with me.

Once we realized we really weren’t leaving the house, we tried out the new-fangled idea of ordering groceries by computer only to learn that you couldn’t even get a delivery slot — never mind an actual delivery — for as much as four weeks into the future!

I remember eyeing our last carton of eggs, wondering how long I could make them last. Suddenly, I regretted scoffing at my parents’ tales of Depression-era cooking.

A year ago I remember a conversation about whether or not there would be the usual multi-family Seder. Of course there wasn’t. Instead we entered the land of Zoom.

My husband and I, at a table by ourselves for the first time ever, didn’t even have all the Seder plate staples. We had a roasted egg — which we had plans for later — but no parsley.

I had no idea how to get hold of the requisite lamb’s shank bone. Finally, I decided that a sturdy branch from the firewood basket, broken to size, would have to do. I still have it; I call it my “vegan shank bone.”

And I needed an orange. I value the new tradition of adding an orange to the Seder plate — supposedly because one cranky rabbi 20 some years ago had said, “A woman belongs in the Rabbinate like an orange belongs on the Seder plate.”

“Done!” said every woman I know.

We’d been expecting a delivery of groceries, but by the start of the Zoom service, they still hadn’t come. All I had was a long-ago gift candle in the shape of an orange. At least on Zoom, you couldn’t tell that it had a wick and smelled like dust.

Last year about this time, I remember my husband predicting we might still be stuck at home by June. I was furious! How dare he say such a horrifying thing! Just thinking about it, I could feel my throat closing up and the walls closing in. I had to slow down my breathing and remind myself that it was pointless to look any farther ahead than dinner.

Sometimes I worried about how isolated we were all going to be, and whether we’d even be speaking the same language by the end of this crisis — or if we’d be speaking mutually indecipherable tongues, the way Latin became French, Spanish and Italian.

Especially in families with young kids, there are words, and entire concepts, that no one else can begin to fathom. For example, I remember a time when our boys were small, and I found myself asking a hotel reservation clerk if they had any “non-Gageekigump” rooms.

“I beg your pardon?” the mystified clerk had replied. I’d had to hand the phone over to my husband. I didn’t know how to explain that our boys jumped back and forth between beds in any room containing more than one of such things, shouting “Gageekigump!” as they flew — and so I needed a room that did not have beds in such a configuration.

“We need one queen size and a pull-out sofa,” my husband had explained.

So I wondered early in the pandemic would people even be able to understand each other  by whenever we could get back together?

But one day as I worried about this, the phone rang. “Hello?” I said, dubiously.

It was a younger neighbor.

“Oh! Phone calls! I forgot we can still do those,” I said, with relief.

“Of course, silly! I’m heading to the store, and I was just wondering if you’d like me to pick up those eggs you were worried about or bagels or something.”

Thank God for friends and family. And neighbors. And short-term thinking. Those are what have gotten me through this pandemic—and what I have learned to value the most.

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