The gift of Covid

How a global pandemic helped me turn my life around. Also: Nab 20% off subscriptions this week!

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Hi Midlifers!

How are you? Does anyone know who I can talk to about how fast these weekends go? I’d really like to register a formal complaint. I could another 12 hours — well, that’s a lie. I’ll take 24.

A friend had reached out on Friday to see if I wanted to go that night to a Full Moon Circle and Sound Bath event in nearby Asbury Park. While I had no idea what any of that meant, I needed to get out of the house so quickly texted back “YES.” I couldn’t spend a second night in a row collapsed on my couch after an intense day working from home. My Innie needed to rest.

Let me just say that the situation was very weird, and that I am open to weird situations. But it felt like I’d stepped into a really bad and poorly-made movie or TV show about witchcraft and sorcery made by people who’d seen too many bad movies and TV shows about witchcraft and sorcery. I left with a headache and some great content.

The public radio station that I listen to has been doing a bunch of reporting this weekend about how this week marked five years since the start of the pandemic. They’ve been encouraging listeners to call in and share any significant changes they made during that strange stretch of time that are still in place today. It’s made me think a lot about that wacky full moon experience and how the way I spend my Friday nights (and TBH: every night) has changed since March 2020.

Back then, I’d only want to do something at night that involved drinking. Opportunities to segue from the drink or two I’d have at home around 5:00 into more drinking and then coming home and having a final drink. I wouldn’t want to arrive at a Full Moon Circle at 7:30 half in the bag. I’d rather be out at dinner or meeting friends at a bar for drinks.

Here’s the actual start to my journal entry for Tuesday, March 10, 2020. At the top of the page, I noted that it was 7:08 a.m. and labeled it "Coronavirus Day 1” (ever the reporter):

“(The high school) closed today due to Coronavirus exposure of one student and these End Days kind of vibe is perfect for where my life seems to be. End Days. It’s like everything I’ve tried to suppress and ignore is coming out of the woodwork. My financial problems/debt. Underemployment. Old house. Taxes. My drinking.”

Yowza. That girl.

One of many cocktails shaken, poured and stirred in my home during 2020.

As everything began to shut down and I strongly encouraged my three older kids to come home, one of my biggest concerns was running out of booze. There’d been rumors of the state closing liquor stores and I was in a panic. For three days in a row, I went to Wegman’s and loaded up a cardboard box with alcohol. Wine. Beer. Vodka. Bourbon. I thought about every possible cocktail I might want to make and bought its boozy ingredients and then came home and stacked the boxes in the living room.

Once all three of the older kids left their newly grown up lives to come live back at my house to shelter in place together, I tried to overcome simmering tensions with drinks. Perfect combination, right? Over the next few months, we had happy hours and boozy afternoons sitting on the patio in beach chairs and even an alcohol-soaked Birthday Olympics I arranged to celebrate someone’s 23rd birthday quarantine style. I even invited their dad to join us. What could go wrong!

My behavior might have been dysfunctional, but damn, that’s a good board.

A few days into our pandemic-ing together, I wrote a Contagion Manifesto that I presented to the kids at a Friday afternoon family meeting under the guise of a lighthearted happy hour. I told the kids I wanted us all to be able to share what we thought was working and where we were experiencing challenges. But really, back then, I just wanted to tell everyone that they needed to chip in on costs and labor of running our pandemic operation and should not under any circumstances poop in the downstairs bathroom. I wanted to control where they slept and pooped and mostly, how they felt about the whole thing.

My actual powder room signage at the start of the pandemic.

I marinated the whole thing in a crisp rose and then set a match to it. Talk about a powder keg.

Things (and by “things” I mean tempers and emotions) ebbed and flowed through the spring. Kids came and went. There were fights and tears. At one point, the two girls decamped to an apartment in Northern Virginia after a particularly ugly blowout. They packed up my car with some of my old furniture I’d said during happier times one of the girls could have, and drove off, leaving me standing shell-shocked in the driveway. The boys and I spent the rest of the afternoon weeding the yard and then watched Fight Club after dinner.

By the fall, the two older kids had returned to their adult lives and a new-new normal descended. I mean, I was still drinking every day but at least I didn’t have to navigate SO many personalities over the course of 24 hours. I didn’t have to keep trying to find the tail of where I stopped and the kids started.

In mid-October, my oldest child turned 28 and to celebrate, he came home from NYC and my younger daughter and I made a big dinner. I simmered a meaty bolognese all afternoon while she made fresh pasta and together, we baked a chocolate cake and iced it with a peanut butter buttercream. My son’s favorite flavor combo. I’d asked the kids’ dad to join us for the celebration and there was a lot of red wine and after dinner some of us sat in the TV room to watch football and drink some more.

And at some point during the course of that post-dinner time sitting on my old IKEA couch and half-watching the sports, I stopped drinking. I put the not-very-good wine down on a small table I kept near the couch, and I never picked it up again.

And I still haven’t.

There’s a phrase I like that folks in recovery use: Little by slowly. That’s how I would describe my slow (some would say, painfully slow) realization that I needed to stop drinking. It didn’t happen all at once. And it wasn’t even like I had some Hallelujah Moment that night watching football on my couch. It was more like finally listening to the voice screaming inside my head: If not now, when? I just decided that “when” had finally arrived.

I had my last drink on October 13, 2020 and it’s been a journey since then. There have been a lot of starts and stops but overall, things have moved in the right direction. Lately, I’ve been working a lot on that codependence piece. Trying to get better at seeing my four kids not as extensions of myself but as separate human beings. It’s a lot harder than it looks.

I still write in my journal at least once a week but nowadays, it’s a little less grim. I mean, back then, I used to rate my hangovers at the top of the page most days. I’d note my weight and then assess that day’s hangover based on a 1-5 rating system. Most came in at around 3.5 and once I reported a DEFCON 4.5 situation.

That journal entry at the start of the pandemic was actually a 2-pager — something I didn’t often do. But I was really scared about the direction my life had been moving in prior to the pandemic. I was convinced that I had frittered away my life and, at 54, that it was too late to change. On page 2, I wrote (in purple ink, obvs):

“There’s a big part of me that thinks it’s too late for anything. That I’m old, nothing is going to change, so why try — what does it matter? It’s like all I really knew how to do was be a mom. And I did it okay, Like, if it were a paid position, I’d have earned a mid-manager salary. But that gig is practically up … What is my purpose?”

Somewhere over the course of the 1,615 days since I had that last bad drink, I have gotten myself on a path that feels more purposeful than that situation five years ago. And now, while I do feel like it might be too late for that career as a Broadway actress, I feel hopeful about life. I don’t hear the birds chirping in the morning — like I did today —and want to scream at them to shut the fuck up. I appreciate their happiness. Their enthusiasm around getting up and doing it all again. Now, I can feel that energy in my heart, calling to the possibilities of the new day. That anything can happen.

Pandemic leftovers

While I have tried to ditch a lot of my bad pandemic behavior (drinking, trying to control kids), I have held onto a couple of recipes that I made a lot during those months we spent together. I pulled this ol’ chestnut out of my Pinterest recipe page the other day to modify for my current life (read: no potatoes or leeks but lots of broccoli and brussels sprouts instead). I made a yogurt-y harissa dip and it was quite yummy.

Start your day with a poetry bath

I don’t know about you, but poetry has always struck me as something I wasn’t smart enough to understand. Like, what was up with J. Alfred Prufrock? So my more recent discovery of the joy that can be found in poems has been revelatory and my gateway has been Mary Oliver. Every morning, I pull out my paperback copy of Devotions that’s on my nightstand and read a few and always, always, out loud (is that just me?). I started a few days this week crying. Case in point:

Gah, my dog makes me cry.

Seen: This week walking toward the boardwalk.

Finally, something for your money

Dear readers, in honor of my 50+ paying subscribers — those lovely souls who have chosen to throw some money in the hat and support my work — a little bonus content. Starting next Friday, March 21, I’ll be sending out an email to paying subscribers filled with all my recommendations for what to do, watch, read, cook and buy as you head into the weekend. Want to get in on the action? It’s not too late (see long pandemic story above)!! I’m offering a 20% discount on subscriptions through Thursday before our first Weekend email goes out this Friday. Please join us by clicking the button below to sign up!

GAH, thank you for reading

I’m just so honored to have you read and follow along. If you have time, it would mean so much to me if you could “heart” this post, share your thoughts in the comments below or share with a friend and grow this community of Midlifers. Last week I bullied my coworkers into liking the post to try to get it to 50 but fell short (will muscle children next)! Let’s see if we can make it with this one! You guys are the best.

I’ll see you here next Sunday,

xoAmy