Holiday Letter 2020

 

Holiday Letter 2020

 

Introduction

Usually when I sit down to write the annual Christmas/Holiday Letter/email, I start out reviewing what things happened in the past year to see what stands out as especially meaningful, things like family events, trips taken, old friends visited, and new experiences. So, I went to the 2020 calendar and flipped through the months – December, nothing: November, nothing; . . . I had to go all the way back to March to find a meaningful entry that had not been crossed out or erased. Everyone reading this is likely in the same boat, so I am not going to elaborate here on what kind of a year 2020 has been in terms being kept from doing things, kept from being with people, and kept from living life to the fullest.

Still there were silver linings, silk purses made from sows’ ears, serendipitous situations, and bright spots. 2020 was not the proverbial ‘ill wind’ as the winds of fortune blew some to fair ports and sheltered locations.

When writing the Christmas letter, I also turn to last year’s Christmas letter to see where I left off, though for reasons unknown, I didn’t do a Christmas letter last year or the year before. To remedy that I will do a short summary of the events of the gap years and put it in an attachment which those who want to be brought up to speed can read at their pleasure. In fact, I will use that approach for other topics as well making this a smorgasbord that people can take from as they please.

So, to the letter. . .

Dear Family and Friends,

We find ourselves at the end of 2020 in stasis yet remarkably blessed. The world events of November and December with elections and vaccines show that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is a bright light. However, the tunnel that is 2020 has had more twists and stomach-wrenching dips than Space Mountain so we are keeping the seatbelts buckled and the masks on.

We are safe, we have our well-being, we have our health though our sanity is on shaky ground. Being retired has buffered us from the turmoil that many have faced in their job situations; yet, like many working folk, we have repeatedly suffered from Zoom fatigue. We are thankful our children both have jobs that allow them to work remotely and hunker down in relative safety.  Our experience with COVID will be served up on the smorgasbord table. The short story is that it has taken friends, it has touched family, it has been a constant, unseen presence that has defined our lives. It has changed our world and how we relate to it, but it has not changed us.

We have been in North Carolina five years now and have connected with a warm community of new friends and new neighbors. Both of us are active in our immediate community and in our church. Lenora is secretary for the church’s Board of Trustees and the board of its affiliated foundation. Michael is co-chairman of the annual pledge campaign and is a Worship Associate.  Those roles made both of us active participants in the transition from in-person to on-line services – and had both of us participating in a lot of Zoom meetings.  We both sing in the church SATB choir which also transitioned to being a virtual choir.

Church members also organized a mask making brigade which assembled and distributed thousands of washable cloth masks to vulnerable people through a broad network of local organizations. Lenora would get baggies with kits of fabric and string cut to size by the people ahead of her in the production line and sew them into finished masks.

As the election neared, Lenora’ efforts turned to postcard writing, penning handwritten notes to individuals in the battleground states. When her hand cramped from the writing, Lenora did short stints phone banking.

Music is an important part of our lives with the usual high points being performing in and attending live performances. Lenora is in a classical community chorus and Michael sings with a Barbershop Harmony men’s chorus. Each continued to ‘rehearse’ virtually to varying degrees and each created virtual choir videos. Creating a virtual choir video is a labor of love with the director putting in tens of hours per song in preparation and production. As choristers, we likewise each take hours to rehearse; then we prepare a recording ‘studio’ in the house positioning music where it can be seen while looking at the camera, setting up the iPad to playback and the iPhone to record. We then sing a seemingly endless number of takes to get one free of obvious gaffes.

We are both relatively healthy but are not immune to the vicissitudes of aging and disease.  Both of us had Mohs surgery to remove cancerous spots; however, location and previous medical history meant that Lenora’s procedure involved major reconstructive surgery and significant aftercare. One of the reasons we chose this area was the availability of high-quality medical care and we are taking advantage of it.

Bella was our ‘quaranteam-mate’ as memorialized by a Life Is Good T-shirt. As lock-down cut out every other social interaction, many days Bella’s walks were the only time we would venture out of the house and our only face-to-face communication would come from the random times our path would cross that of another dogwalker.

2020 was going to be the year we traveled extensively. I did a quick calculation, and we would have been traveling for 10 weeks from April to August and have flown 10,000 miles and driven 5000 miles. Some things were deferred until it is safe to travel again, some were cancelled, and some went virtual.  We would have seen a lot of old friends and made a lot of new memories.

The 2020 event we were most looking forward to attending was Elizabeth’s Ph.D. graduation ceremony. After six years of hard work. Elizabeth was recognized by the University of Illinois with awards for both her teaching and research skills. We were looking forward to the robing ceremony (I had not gone to mine) as the robe was going to be a graduation present, one she would use in the coming years processing with the faculty as her future students graduate. The ceremonies were first cancelled then a hastily cobbled together virtual ceremony was broadcast.  One silver lining was that we were able to virtually attend her thesis defense. In a sign of the times moment, her advisory committee took an exceptionally long time in recess after her defense, then emerged and sheepishly admitted that the issue was not Elizabeth’s qualifications but rather that they couldn’t figure out how to digitally sign the form attesting that her defense was successfully completed.

2020 did have some travel. We did get to the Outer Banks, albeit restricting ourselves to things that could be done contact-free.  We rented a cottage in Manteo as we knew from previous stays that we could use it and the local beaches safely. We took a day trip to the charming, historic town of New Bern, NC.  Wanting to see some fall colors, we took a 12-hour drive to Asheville, along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and back, eating lunch and dinner in the car to minimize contacts.

Thanksgiving was a special time for us. Evan and the wonderful woman he is seeing, Taylor Short, tested, quarantined, then drove down from New York City without stopping to join us marking the first (and only) time anyone else had been in our house since March.  We had a delightful visit, a scrumptious meal, and Zoomed with family who could not gather in person.

For us, the holidays are the time to celebrate traditions, from the New England-style candles in the windows, to the tree with ornaments collected in our travels, to reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ from a book with the children’s handprints on the flyleaf. The creche, hand painted by our sister-in-law, Pat Field, shares a table with the UU chalice. Familiar Christmas carols serenade from the stereo as Hallmark movies end happily on the TV.

We will soon transition from the spiritual and sugar highs of the Christmas season to the resolution making (and breaking) of the New Year. 2020 has been a hard year and it hasn’t just been the pandemic. 2020 has been a year where bad things happened to good people. Too many good people have been lost, too many good people have suffered losses. But through it all, we have persisted. 

We take into the New Year hope, a shining, ‘once in 800 years’ Christmas star’s worth of hope. We wait for our turn in the New Year to be injected with two doses worth of mRNA hope. We wait for the tipping point when it is safe to travel again and we will set off looking for hope in new places and in the hugs of old friends. We will take deep breaths of hope unencumbered by masks. We will share our hope with those that struggle to find theirs.

We are looking forward to sharing 2021’s Christmas letter with you and hearing about your 2021. There is sort of a ‘Well, 2021 certainly has to be better than 2020!’ feeling in the air. That said, we want to close with a message of gratitude thinking of those things that 2020 has brought. First, we, Lenora and Michael, have each other and we have you and for that we are grateful. Each of our children has made significant transitions in 2020 – Evan from South Africa to New York City and Elizabeth to the start of her career in Salt Lake City. Each of the children has found love – Evan with Taylor and Elizabeth with her Tibetan Terrier puppy, Piper. By taking away seemingly everything, 2020 has taught us what is important and for that we are grateful.

May the things that are important to you always be accessible as you find them inside yourself and share them out into the world.

 

Love and sincere wishes for a very Happy New Year,

Lenora, Michael and Bella