I recall saying that 2021 could be worse. Several times. When I said that I have to be honest I was not picturing an insurrection against the capitol caused by #45. But I knew it could be worse.
I don’t have a lot of coherent thoughts about that week because when I think about it I feel this gut wrenching burning anger and fear and a lot of other feelings too. Probably shame too that this was my country. I think about my Dad, turning over in his grave; he would have been the first to volunteer for the National Guard to go protect the Capitol. He would have been furious. I can almost hear him ranting.
It’s hard to put into words what it was like watching the footage of that. So I won’t. Because nothing I say can do it justice.
Sunday my sons were with their other Mom and my sister-in-law was teaching a yoga class. Live. In person. I agreed to go and it wasn’t until I felt my eyes welling up in Lizard pose that I realized why. I hadn’t done a live class since March 2020. So much has changed. So many lives lost. So much upheavel and isolation.
I never appreciated yoga classes until I didn’t have them. I do them on Zoom but it’s different. Dissonance.
I practiced next to my sister. I didn’t know any one else there. It was a huge cold industrial building converted into a gym space. Big enough that we were more than ten feet from any one else. We all kept our masks on the whole time and the ceilings were ridiculously high. It felt as safe as it was going to be in these times.
I had the benefit of being a week out from my second COVID vaccine. So I was less worried than I would have been otherwise.
I was there in lizard pose, with my left foot up next to my left arm. My arms on the floor. Head bowed. I could hear people as we moved through poses. I didn’t have my kids climbing on me or my cats scratching at my mat.
The most visceral aspect that 2020 lacked is connection. We lost our connections with other people. With our humanity. It felt reparative; that moment in Lizard. I was cold. The floor was cold. It was twenty degrees outside. I’m used to hot yoga. This was the opposite.
I had on three layers at one point and my socks.
The acoustics were bad and I could barely hear my sister-in-law as she called the poses.
But that five second moment in Lizard I thought that this was one of the most blissful moments I’d had since March 2020. It was a moment of connection in a time of isolation. It was a moment of light in such dark times. And it gave me hope that we would survive this and things like yoga classes will happen again.
This week I registered with the hospital I work at per diem to administer COVID vaccines as part of their mass vaccination movement that starts this week. Not only do I get to stick people with needles, which after almost a year of telehealth, brings tears of happiness to my eyes, but I get to see other people. Talk to other people. I get to nurse people. In person.
Yes I’ll be masked, face shielded, and jabbing people with a vaccine that has more controversy than any vaccine I’ve encountered in my life. But as a nurse I can’t decline being part of this movement. That line from Hamilton rings, “History has it’s eyes on you,” and I feel super corny saying it but it feels like I’m part of history. Some day when I’m super old and a general annoyance to my children and grandchildren I’ll tell them about COVID and life during a pandemic and how I vaccinated people against it.
I’m sure they will be bored to tears and likely try and escape my presence as soon as possible…and maybe I’ll pretend I can’t hear or like every other old person I’ll pretend I don’t notice the social cues that they are bored and plod on in a boring account of administering injections.
It’s a weird time. A new administration. Fox News doesn’t talk about Trump much these days, or the Capitol insurrection. So that’s cool:/ Yes I check Fox News. I like to know what my fellow Americans are being told so I can counter it. I used to think life would go back to normal after COVID. Now I know there is no normal. There is a before, a now, and a then. The before is gone. The now is here and then is coming. None of it the same as before.
Even my beloved yoga has changed. I can get further into half split then ever before. I can do a one legged stand almost perfectly. I’ve spent the last year continuing to deepen my practice. So when I hit the mat in an actual in person live class it wasn’t the same me as before COVID. But it still felt damn good.
Lesbehon...est 