One Year Later:  Light . . . Books . . . and a Book 

 “Oh, when I heard about those quarantine conditions—you know, staying home, not seeing a lot of people—I thought, that’s just the way I want to live!” An artist friend told me this early last spring, as we talked about the Covid 19 lockdown. I was shocked. 

A couple of months later, out for a walk, I met a new neighbor. Smiling and friendly, proud of the ambitious remodel he was engaged in, he introduced himself. Instinctively I reached out my hand to shake his. Oh, no, I shouldn’t have done that. . . what if he’s contagious with Covid?     

While I can’t sum up a year in just slivers of moment, nevertheless these two incidents say much about my life in 2020. “When it all went down” in March a year ago, a graph of my spirits would have registered a sudden sheer drop. Slowly I adjusted. Also I followed the seasons; as always I found it almost impossible to feel unhappy on beautiful summer days. However, fall and winter brought bitter election misery and rising numbers of Covid cases, yet there was nothing for it but to keep going. I’m now fully vaccinated, as is my husband. 

As for my creative life, however, I have been so happy that I feel almost guilty. My artist friend was right. For a writer and photographer like me, lockdown has been good indeed. Fewer interruptions, fewer excuses to go places (necessary or not), loads of concentrated time at home, a quiet life, and a sense of focusing down. And books to read—oh, so many books!  

And coping with some sort of lockdown did not feel completely new. Over the past five years, I’ve endured two recuperations from eye surgery— mandated living with head bowed for ten days so that my operated-on eyes could heal. No driving, of course. Now, however, my head was bowed only figuratively. 

 Long or short, these lockdowns spurred inner rebellion: nobody’s going to lock me down, nor my powers of observation and thinking. Lockdowns have made me see myself as a heroine, almost— challenged and defiant.  

But they do involve great loss of freedom. I have desperately missed time with close friends. And spontaneity. Not just coffee dates and lunches, but the chats that spring up when you’re doing a church job together or sipping a mocha at Starbuck’s: when talk flows and you sense a current from the other person, or you or your friend opens up and you learn things about her or him—or yourself—that you didn’t know before. The kind of connections you can’t plan for. While these exchanges occasionally happen in email or letters (A few people still write them as do I), and sometimes over the phone or on Zoom, most often they happen at anything but social or electronic distance.  

However, for much of 2020, I have been anything but lonely. Connections have been going on all the time within me. Writing has come to feel like meeting up with a host of dear friends. My internal webs have extended and woven themselves into words and chapters, grown, and made a leap of faith—into finishing the book about our Cape Cod cottage I have been working on for the past ten years.   

Sadly, however, on Jan. 15th, 2020, title to the cottage passed to new owners—the literal death of “our place on Cape Cod.” Our Craigville. My husband and I missed the place terribly. We talked about it every day.  

I’ve been told that someone once said, “Sally will never finish that book until she can’t go to the cottage anymore.” But I think now that the necessary “death” which made me finish the book was the Covid 19 cutoff of normal life. It’s hardly that I didn’t write earlier (two full drafts of this book already existed), but the confines of 2020 and Covid 19 focused me down. The house was quiet, outside activities were reduced to the occasional Zoom meeting. I had long evenings in which to read, I hardly saw my friends, and I wasn’t traveling anywhere. I am going to get this done. And, most importantly, Now I know how I am going to do it.  

A Place Like This: Finding Myself in a Cape Cod Cottage will be published on July 27th.   A 275 page memoir, it’s my take on life in the wonderful, funky old cottage/house which I’ve visited all the fifty-plus years I’ve been married. Reading, you’ll follow my path and changing viewpoint as seen through the house itself, food, relationships, the natural world of Cape Cod, and photography, including some wonderful pictures. My book tells of my artistic coming of age and the next stage of my journey as an independent woman. 

 I so look forward to taking you to the cottage with me and I think you, too, will come to love Craigville.  

 A Place Like This!