Lessons from Living in Isolation

 Annamaria on Monday

I had been torn about what to write this week, which is not unheard of, but my argument with myself went on for much longer than usual over the past seven days.  I began the week determined to move away from my rather self-pitying post of last Monday and to get back to my more life-long optimistic point of view.

The US national news reports warred with me on this topic.  Never has the outlook for my country's beautiful democracy been more grim.  Desperate to hang on to my positivity, I minimized the time I spent listening to and reading current events.

The gloom that insisted I attend to it assaulted me on Sunday morning.  After a wonderful uplifting Saturday visit to my beloved mid-Hudson Valley and a sleep over a sweet Covidi-safe inn, I awoke to a rain storm that plagued my drive home with several tests of my ability to keep my car on the road while hydroplaning.  Still, by the time I left the car in the garage, I had made up my mind to tell you the positive side of the life I complained about last week.  So, here it is what I have learned from living largely in isolation for the past five-plus months.  New habits that will continue to make life nice no matter what .

Fate has brought me good luck worth cherishing.  My apartment in New York is a spacious and pleasant place.  Over the past months, minor improvements have made it even more so.  As have small indulgences.  Like fresh flowers from the open-air Union Square Market.  Bright bouquets bring sweet, small joys that can be savored all the day long.

I have learned to shop for food like an American.  My childhood, with first generation American parents and immigrant grandparents in the house, taught me to shop pretty much daily for my food. Living in a city where one walks groceries home contributed to continuing this habit.  Wanting  to minimize trips to the grocery store  and the availability of fabulously efficient delivery services in NYC compelled a change.  My freezer now stores more than homemade broth (kept for risotto!).  Nowadays if the spirit does not move me to go shopping, I can still give myself a nice home-cooked meal.

A major new indulgence is the quality of the wine to goes with those dinners.  Grateful that I can, I began to make that daily glass and half something really special.  Why not, NYC restaurants charge $12-20 for a glass of vino.  If circumstances prevent one from the joys of dinner out with friends, why not transfer that price to what will be consumed at home.  Lovely white Burgundies have become a staple chez moi.  Whatever else happens in the world at large, I am not going back to "okay" when it comes to le vin. 

Another new habit involves giving up an indulgence and adopting a new habit.  Though I hate shopping for clothing and never cared for fashion, I have enjoyed collecting stylish very plain clothing that makes me feel good when I go out.  Not going out has shown me that I have quite enough of the things I need for the life I lead.  I still get emails offering clothing I might not have resisted in the past.  No more. 

Instead, I have new habit that makes me feel very good indeed.  Very generous tipping.  The whole idea of tipping makes me nuts.  Employers should pay their workers a living wage.  They do in Italy, for example, a far less wealthy country than the US of A.  Italy also provides great healthcare and education through university to all its citizens.  In my backward country, far too many people depend on tips to make enough to pay the rent and put food on the table.  That must change, and will, I hope.  In the meanwhile, it makes sense--if one can--to give those service people more of boost than expected.

Wet stuff lugged home

On Sunday morning, when I left the garage and started to tote too many things home through the rain, I had on my mind what I would write above.  And I was  feeling lucky that I was well enough to have the kind of life I lead--Covid restrictions and all.  However.  A person wearing a mask has trouble seeing the ground just in front of her.  As I turned the corner on Broadway, a gust of wind turned my umbrella inside out just as the heel of my shoe hit an unseen patch of wet leaves on the sidewalk.   BOOM!  I went down.  Left knee and right hand hit the pavement.  Thanks to the rain and it being a Sunday morning, no other New Yorker was nearby, so I had pick myself up.

I was tempted, as I continued home shook up and getting wetter by the second, to jettison the whole idea of this blog.  Maybe go AWOL.  Maybe repost something from the past and make that tumble an excuse.

But a lesson from my childhood glowed strong in my mind.  To think of minor bad experiences as the lesser of two evils.  On the road, the hydroplaning could have led to anything between fatal and an accident that would have put me in a hospital.  If--in my state--the governor had not mandated masks and inspired to the populace bring down our transmission rate, rather than being caught off guard by a blind spot, I might be an at risk member of a population on the brink.  And on and on.

Lucky.  Sometimes it means getting the challenges one can deal with.  And having been carefully taught to count one's blessings.