Today is Tuesday the first of June and our family visitors will be leaving soon.
Our son, wife and the two grand-teens arrived on Saturday: the first overnight, in-person visitors here since the end of July relaxation last year, and almost the only people who've been inside our home since the Covid lockdowns began.
Having them here has been a nice, almost familiar feeling. I have come across them face to face in our rooms and hallways and bathroom doorways, and that simple thing has been amazing.
Yet I must admit that after this last long year and more of an almost solitary life, seeing so many more living bodies in the rooms felt quite unusual. Happily the same but also, at first, warily different.
However, this current visit also made me face up to things that I may have pushed aside, shelved or simply ignored as the lockdowns came and went. If society is opening up again, what does it mean for all the small habits and defences I've developed over this time.
For example:
I will have to meet all my social friends and work friends face to face.
Some of the zooms will go. My local book groups will be meeting in gardens this summer, umbrellas at the ready. Other friends are suggesting small get-togethers. But do I even know how to be among humans any more? What interesting thing can I say or share when I've done almost nothing and been nowhere? I might opt for the trick of mentally listing a few topics I can still talk about easily, and without any easy pity-me moaning, especially when many have had a darker, sadder time of it than I.
And I must remember that, conversationally, everyone is likely to be in the same situation.
I will need to face up to the sartorial change that will (sometimes) bring.
My year-long uniform of baggy black jeans, t-shirts and jumpers is not for public sightings. I am in definite need of an upgrade. If I am going out into the world again, I need to examine the wider contents of my wardrobe, not just the heap on the chair, in the hope it makes me seem ready to meet the world out there.
I will, as I heave myself forward into the light of the big lamp in the sky, also have to face the fact that all the bulges and signs of my unhealthy ways will be evident.
Too late, now, to pretend that my claims about long healthy walking meant more than a gentle amble to the shops for essentials. I have to face the fact that the scales don't lie and the extra podge shows. C'est moi, post lockdown. (Luckily, one of the visitors brought me a box of posh chocolates.)
I will need, as an introvert, to face the perils of group dynamics all over again.
I am used to interacting with the cat and with the OH, and a couple of people who call by with deliveries. That's mostly it. And oodles on zoom.
Soon my life will be more demanding, full of small scale interactions in the library and bookshops and so on. However, in a few weeks, fingers crossed, I will be away at a residential writers retreat and facing a score of people, some unknown, for several sessions over almost a week. How will being with all those faces for so long actually be?
I have decided to take this new task gently, to rely on my guess that others might feel slightly trepidatious too,, Yet I also need to allow myself, anxious or not, to be quietly happy that this event might be happening.
However, there is one face I'm not ready to face: an updated author photo.
No, Not yet. Do I want to be involved with any more public face-to-facing?
Not yet. I will stick with my paraphrase of the approach modelled by that most admirable author Jan Mark. Never change. Never apologise.
Not everything needs to be in your face.
Courage, mon amis!
Penny Dolan
@pennydolan1
Driving a long way.
4 comments:
Bon courage to you, too, Penny. It's a comfort to think that in our different ways we are all changing gear at the moment, some with a joyful crash, others easing into first. The garden book group with umbrellas sounds a perfect place to start. And good luck with a photo, eventually.
You heap your clothes on a bedroom chair too! I am not alone.
Good luck with rejoining society. I'm wondering whether to bother.
I too have a heap of clothes on a bedroom chair, though none like that rather gorgeous red dress! And you are definitely not alone - we have all been locked in for so long that I think we're all feeling vulnerable at the thought of mixing with other people again. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your visitors' stay - it must be lovely to see them all after so long, though I'm sure you'll find yourself utterly exhausted when they've left! We've got out of the habit of any sort of socialising, so even a couple of hours leaves me feeling wiped out, let alone a visit of several days! Be very kind to yourself afterwards.
Feel my ending might need more explanation.
Jan Mark was an amazing author, mostly writing what is now known as YA. She was a gifted and admired writing tutor, very kind and helpful but also with quite a strong-minded approach.
Her familiar unchanging b&w author portrait became almost an icon. To me, it suggested utter confidence, determination and her belief in the importance of the individual writer.
This was two or three decades ago, when social media presence & celebrity - as we experience it now - did not exist, and a single portrait, for use in publications, jacket flaps, course details and showcards was all that was needed.
The very opposite of the constantly changing Facebook profile.
Post a Comment