Lessons for a Long Winter
Choosing to look up, as cheesy as that sounds. (Taken by Andrew on yesterday’s walk.)
In a normal year, when the calendar changes from January to February, it’s sort of a non-event for me. Beyond trying to remember to say “rabbit rabbit” as soon as I wake up (thank you, Nickelodeon, for convincing me that this is an incredibly important thing to do!), the first day of the month feels like pretty much every other day of the month. And February itself is just a continuation of January: sure, it’s nice to have a long weekend in the middle of the month, but it’s still cold, it’s still winter. But this year, the arrival of February 1 felt strangely … meaningful. Like some kind of fresh start.
If during a normal year January is a clean slate, then this January was the opposite. This January was a month of painful and intense transitions, of literally violent clashes between old and new. The insurrection at the capital. The record-shattering Covid death tolls. The last gasps of the Trump presidency. Everything coming to a head at once. Those were days that required some serious white-knuckling. So when January 1 failed to be a nice clean reset, my mind jumped ahead to January 20. Surely that day would give me the clean slate I craved. A new president; a new vice president; a functioning federal government! And January 20 was a cathartic and beautiful day—I hope I never forget the feeling of that day—but, at the same time, we didn’t wake up on January 21 to a suddenly changed world.
It’s not like the world changed on February 1, either. But the mind is an incredibly powerful thing. The mind can latch onto the tiniest little seed and make meaning out of it. The first day of the month is merely a symbol, but sometimes a symbol is enough to get you started; to give you the jolt of energy you need; to help steer your gaze in a slightly different direction. I think, on some level, the arrival of February 1 felt meaningful to me because I needed it to be meaningful; because I had decided it would be; because I was tired of the way I had been feeling through January.
Those white-knuckle January days reminded me of some important things, which I had perhaps gotten weary of remembering during this endless Covid marathon. Right now we’re in a stretch of time during which we need to manufacture our own momentum, because the world is hard-pressed to give us the momentum we’re craving. Of course there is momentum on a bigger scale—the vaccines are being deployed; spring and summer will inevitably come—but what I mean specifically is a daily sense of momentum.
I remember, at the beginning of the pandemic, being plagued by a sense of absolute stuck-ness. Nothing seemed to be getting better. So much was beyond my control. This was a scary, sad feeling. But I have a very wise friend who helped me process those feelings. In those freaky March days, as Covid was ramping up, I was expressing this sense of paralysis to her, and she reminded me that there were things in my control. She helped me break it down. What was scary? Getting sick was scary. Could I do something to guarantee I wouldn’t get sick? Of course not. But could I do certain things to help myself out? Of course I could. Take sensible precautions. Take vitamins. Eat healthy. Get enough sleep and exercise and fresh air. Help my immune system in these small ways. This wouldn’t necessarily save me from anything; but it was something I could do. It was something I could do. And this made me feel better right away.
I liked that feeling, that tiny sense of taking control. I wanted to keep going with it. What else was scary? Doomscrolling was scary. So I limited myself to checking the news once per day (and never EVER after 5 p.m., because that was a recipe for sleeplessness). What else? Feeling trapped in the relentless echo chamber of Instagram and Twitter. So I logged off social media for a while. What else? Talking too much about the pandemic. So we instituted a ban on Covid conversation at the dinner table. I won’t claim that these changes were easy, or instantaneous, or that I managed to stick with them all of the time. But even a little bit was better than nothing.
Sometimes I look back on last March and April and May and think, man, that shit was hard. It was scary and it was hard. Those days were so austere. Get up. Get yourself through the day. Go to bed. Get up and do it again. The world became very small, and very routinized. I am finding that this Covid winter has a similar austerity. It’s certainly not the same, but in a lot of ways, we’ve been here before. If you were to believe the cliched folk wisdom—that things tend to be easier the second time; that you can’t step in the same river twice—you might internalize the idea that, really, you ought to be tougher by now. That it shouldn’t feel so scary and hard this time around. But why on earth shouldn’t it? These feelings are a reasonable response to a global pandemic.
And yet, because maybe there is some wisdom to that cliche, I’m remembering the lessons I learned the first time around. I know that I have to keep moving; I know that the feelings alone aren’t enough, and that I have to let those feelings spur me to action. So what do I do? How do I take the symbolic reset of February 1, and make something out of it, and find ways, even if tiny, of taking a measure of control?
A lot of it is the same (cutting way back on news consumption; not letting Covid dominate the conversation; being borderline religious about daily movement and fresh air). Some of it is different (upgrading from a surgical mask to an N95 mask). Some are new twists on old habits. I realized, the first time around, how important it is to stay connected with friends. And that, in the absence of our usual channels, you have to forge those connections in any way you can. So as this wintry hibernation gets even quieter and more repetitive, as our lives appear increasingly flattened and mundane, I am learning to care deeply about the mundane parts. I want to know what you ate for lunch. I want to know what kind of yoga you did this morning. I want to know how your plants are doing. I want to know the highlight and lowlight of your day, even if the highlight was your cup of coffee, even if the lowlight was a splinter in your thumb. I want to look at these flat gray days and realize that each day contains ups and downs, and that these ups and downs can be as meaningful as we want them to be. I want to recognize that the mundane isn’t actually mundane.
Is this weird? Has Covid made me weirder? But if it has, is that such a problem?
And will this work? Will these teeny, tiny things get me through the winter? I don’t know, but this is where I’m choosing to start, and for now, that’s enough.