Whoohee! This has been a doozy of a year! I’ve never done an end of year recap, but think this is a good one to reflect back over. It’s been a year that changed just about everything.

Remember the Seven PM clap? Winter and spring we saluted the frontline paramedics, docs, nurses, and other hospital staff at end of shift. Clapping and banging on pots and pans. A collective moment of “Thank you” and “We’re still here.”

I’ll start with my birthday in late December 2019. I was so sick with a weird upper respiratory thing, that birthday week was cancelled. I have WTC issues with my breathing, so a three-week lingering cough is fairly normal for me. But this cough? Even friends who know me well, looked askance. I had no sense of taste or smell, but I had a cold, so thought nothing of it. By early June when I had a test and an antibody test, no antibodies were revealed. But that was six months out. Will never know if I had the ‘rona or not.

Late winter, early spring 2020 was such a lonely time. Solo walks each day with my camera helped to keep me sane.

My son, Tom, was so afraid of me catching the virus from one of his kids, that I stopped going out to Long Beach. He carried in groceries and did errands for me a few times. He and Alice were both out of work, and Al decided that they’d make do with one vehicle. She insisted that I keep her car and use it for the final few months of the lease. I’d been riding the nearly empty city busses to go take walks and photos in other neighborhoods. She did not want me on public transit at all. The isolation was dreadful. Grateful for Zoom moments, but still.

We watched in terror as the numbers in the city spiked. The news was crazy making, mostly because of the ineffective response from the federal government. Remember that tons of our stockpiled PPE was shipped out to China by dealmaker in chief? If only that one error had not been made, I think of how many lives could have been saved. Compile error upon error and you’ve basically got the story of how our pandemic response became such a… shit-show. Sorry. I can’t come up with a nicer way to put it. Maybe a word will occur to me as I edit.

I live in a really interesting city, so walks around town usually distracted me and helped to pass the early days of the “Pause.””Lockdown.” “House Arrest without ankle monitor?” Whatever. The place looked like a ghost town right quick. Outside, it was so quiet I’d hear birdsong. Usually that was drowned out by background traffic noise.

I had friends scheduled to arrive both before and after St’ Patrick’s Day. The UN cancelled the conferences that Karima was coming for. And when the parade was cancelled, Leeann and Jane decided it was safer for them to bail out also.

I managed to see my pal, Dr. Ali Behr, a few times each month. She worked hard to keep the practice open within the guidelines du jour.

My nephew, George, had an operation Enduring CF Patch, which I loved. I shared it with my pal Liz, and in 20 minutes she emailed me an original design of a mock up for a Sisters on the Fly patch. Great to have artists in the family!

I recently read the reason for the toilet paper shortages. It wasn’t about people hoarding. Although they certainly did. The problem was that the commercial TP manufacturers who sold and delivered to all the closed business and schools, couldn’t pivot quickly enough to package and sell to the home market. And no one has room in their home for one of those giant rolls you see in public restrooms anyway. So we stopped using the toilets at work and school and suddenly felt likely to be caught short at home.

Grandson Jack was supposed to graduate from middle school. He and all the other graduates in 2020 had a miserable end of term.

I started to collect silly images from fb, emails, shop windows. I realized I hadn’t laughed out loud in so long, I resorted to classic Monty Python to counteract the news.

At the end of March, my BFF, Alyssa, heard that one of her Siren Sisters had contracted the virus. It took Kim off the planet in a matter of days. Suddenly, it was all too real. I grieved for my friends. I raged at the continued incompetence of the government, the rising body counts, amid the politicization of safety measures like mask-wearing and avoiding large crowds. On the heels of the rage, the depression landed with both boots. It was finally spring, but so difficult to motivate myself to go out for a walk. I dropped down to just a few walks each week, and watched way more TV than is healthy.

Shopping became more complicated. Favorite stores and restaurants closed. Amazon began delivering with bicycles and Rubbermaid tubs on bike trailers.

But it was spring. Eventually the magnolias, dogwoods, and azaleas wore me down with their beauty. The spring bulbs, all that glorious new life bulging up from the soil. I just couldn’t sit still in the house.

I went on some urban hikes with Ali, and she turned me onto the fun of building in a NY Waterways ferry ride at either end. She takes me to all the best places!

As spring drew to a close, and all my perviously scheduled camping trips were cancelled because the parks and campgrounds couldn’t figure out how to open safely, I realized that i was staring down the barrel of a long and lonely summer in NYC. I reached out to my friends in the North Country, and put together a plan to borrow Alyssa’s car and beat it out of Dodge for a few weeks. There are already blog posts for that part of 2020, so i won’t repeat them here. My Sisters on the Fly sisters took good care of me, and I was actually out of town for six weeks.

I returned in time to unpack and do laundry, before packing up a rental car to go to North Conway, NH. That was the one end of summer trip that wasn’t cancelled. We sat around the campfires, slogged through the mud, shopped at some outlet stores, and did a little fly fishing. It was a lovely end to a surprisingly wonderful summer.

I returned to a city where all kinds of San Gennaro booths had been built for outdoor dining in all the parking lanes, all the gyms and personal trainers had moved into my park, and even preschools had claimed a bit of park grass for the tiny tots t… — I returned to a city where all kinds of San Gennaro booths had been built for outdoor dining in all the parking lanes, all the gyms and personal trainers had moved into my park, and even preschools had claimed a bit of park grass for the tiny tots to gather and play safely.

Any recap of 20202 must include the following names: Ahmaud Arbery, February 23. Breonna Taylor, March 13. George Floyd, May 25. There were extensive protests over these murders, and so many other Black lives that seemed to not matter. There were incidents of looting and property destruction, actions often seemed to be by a different group. I wasn’t out in the streets for any of this, so can’t say for sure. But my heart was certainly with the folks who chose to march and block traffic. Civil disobedience is often required to direct attention to one’s cause. For a while my city was dressed in plywood.

I was grateful when the plywood came down and protests didn’t slide so much into violence. We had a curfew in NYC for a bunch of nights making the lockdown seem even more like house arrest. I didn’t remember living through that before. Maybe during one of the blackouts? Not sure.

At the end of the summer I got busy with writing again, taking classes through the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute. So, mental health walks, some photos, and spend a bunch of the day writing. Keeps me off the streets.

My son Tom started grad school to become a Social Studies teacher. His wife, Alice is doing Yoga teacher training. A house full of scholars! So they’re Keeping Calm and Getting On With It, until we’re all well and truly vaccinated. Makes sense to keep busy, and make the most of this time of unemployment.

Me? I’m retired. I’m just working away at telling the stories. I’ve had some spectacular experiences, have some interesting memories to leave behind. So that is my work as we begin 2021. Best wishes everyone for a great new year.