Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth
until the hour of separation…
Kahlil Gibran
September is one of my favorite months in central Italy. The days remain warm, the evenings deliciously soft and cool.
Vibrant green olives, abundant in the groves are now on the final leg of their journey towards October’s harvest. The air is sweet, rich with the scent of baked earth and rosemary.
This is the month of the vendemmia when the grapes, lush and heavy on the vine, are harvested and transformed into one of Italy’s greatest treasures, vino rosso.
It’s also the month of Panicale’s annual wine festival drawing crowds from all over the world. When we are home, we never miss it.
Caverns in the centro storico of one of Italy’s most beautiful medieval villages are transformed into cantinas serving the best of the regions local red and white wines. While a band plays in the piazza, you stroll from one cantina to the next, wine tasting and sampling local cheeses.
It’s common to cram into the cantinas, shoulder-to-shoulder, exchanging pleasant banter while you move from one table to the next. At the peak of the festa on Saturday night, crowds are heaving and line-ups form outside the more popular venues. It is what Italian’s call ‘normale’ (normal).
But we have said arrivaderci to normal. These are the days of Covid-19 and when Panicale hosted it’s 45th Festa dell’ Uva a few weeks ago, it was in the shadow of growing infection numbers not only across the country but around the world. The US has now surpassed 6 million cases, England has implemented strict measures including limiting the number of people who can gather to socialize, eat together, drink wine together to a total of 6.
It is not over.
Summer weather may be winding down but the virus is just getting its second wind – being carried on the flights of returning vacationers after swirling around crowded nightclub dance floors and drifting over packed beaches.
Killing any hope that we have seen the last of Covid-19.
That life can return to normal.
What keeps me awake at night
I should want to talk about what’s going on in our life: the ongoing house renovations, the highs and lows of seeing the vision for our new home come to life. What it’s like to renovate a house in Italy.
I should want to talk about what been absorbing all of my days for months now.
But I don’t.
I want to talk about what isn’t happening in my life. I want to talk about the thoughts that wake me in a cold sweat in the middle of the night; that make it difficult to find joy in the good things around me – about how I try to quell the rising anxiety when I see another Covid headline.
I want to talk about how we are being robbed of connection, of connecting in these days of Covid-19. How this virus is separating us from those we love and a life many of us took for granted.
From a fellow foreigner whose long-awaited plans to have her family visit here for Christmas now gone, to an American expat who was forced to cancel plans to travel to her beloved niece’s wedding in the US, to me closing in on almost one year without seeing my daughter or baby grandson.
We are all being robbed.
Safety is not in numbers
Even those who are in the same city, the same neighborhood are limited by Covid restrictions. My daughter says she fights back tears when she sees her almost two-year old son run up to a toddler in the playground, wanting to play, only to have the parent snatch their child up. It’s too dangerous to interact with strangers.
She wonders what kind of long-term affect this lack of social interaction will have on single children like my grandson. My cousin is having her second baby any day now and requesting all immediate family members quarantine for two weeks before seeing her or her newborn.
We are all being kept at a distance.
As we close in on six months of co-existing with the virus, we wonder when it will end. Will we be able to gather with extended family around the table this Christmas? Throw a birthday party for our kids? Celebrate the special occasions in our lives with family and friends around us?
It doesn’t seem likely any time soon. We have no choice but to accept this reality and adjust.
Covid is changing us.
Craving connection
It seems the longer life with Covid goes on, the more insular many of us have become. We’d rather stay home than venture ‘out there’ in a world feeling increasingly more distant and disconnected.
We see each other, from a distance, converse with masks that hide our expressions, remain at arms length even when we desperately could use a hug.
One friend recently said, “I can’t take it anymore. I just want a hug. Can I?” and proceeded to embrace me, her masked head turned away from mine, her arms wrapped tightly around me. I squeezed hard and felt the tension fall away from her. A simple hug: so powerful; so transformative.
We need this connection. It is hard to live without it.
I devour brief Instagram videos of our grandson doing something ridiculously adorable. I go through my collection of photos of him every morning over coffee.
I look…I dream…I love. And then I sigh. Knowing it is still a long time away until I will see him again.
This is the Covid Curse.
We must love from a distance. We must find a way to quiet our fears, to believe there are better times ahead. And when the day comes that we can throw off our masks and embrace one other freely, will we recognize each other? Will we recognize ourselves?
I know I feel a change within, a sort of curling in of my sometimes larger-than-life exuberance. Its tucked away, lying dormant in the thick layers of my anxiety. I’ve grown quieter, a dimmer version of myself. I don’t like it. I’m guessing I’m not alone.
How has Covid changed you? How are you coping with separation? I’d really like to know.
Perhaps in sharing how we are all coping with the cancellation of celebrations, how we love from afar, how we stay connected in a disconnected world, we can help each other get through this.
And maybe we will come out on the other side of Covid with a greater appreciation for the relationships that bind us, and the love around us that no amount of separation can divide.
Always together, never apart.
Maybe in distance, but never in heart.
Until then, stay safe
A presto
Anna
RE: COVID CURSE
Your post captures the emotions we experience and the tidal shifts in our behaviours and, therefore, in ourselves, Anna. Your writing is evocative, revealing fears and sadness that underlie each day. Yet we carry on because we must. Thank you, Anna.
Leo C.
Dearest Anna,
Thank you for putting into words all that I/we have been living during this pandemic.
It is the separation from our loved ones. The sticking to our bubbles and making keeping ourselves safe a priority.
For me it is missing the personal connection of touch. I never realized how important physical touching was to me.
It is in facing the fear of the unknown every day and yes, waking up in the middle of the night worrying about things I have no control over.
What I have learned is to take absolute pleasure and gratitude for simple things.
Sharing a smile and realizing that it is ok to not be ok.
To be honest with sharing my truth and exactly how I am feeling.
My daily reality runs the whole gamut of an emotional rollercoaster. It’s ok.
It is the truth. No sugar coating.
No Miss Optimistic. No making things better with a cheery attitude. It’s ok to not be ok.
Feel the fear and get through the day. I have a legitimate fear about my daughter going back to teach high school in a daily changing and anxiety provoking
new environment of what our current education is.
Nothing that any teacher or student could ever have predicted.
So, we tie a knot and hold on for dear life. We get sick and tired of being sick and tired. We hope and live and love the best we can.
And, that’s all that we have control over. How we manage this crazy, complex maze of unknown’s.
Until there is change to a new normal I’ll continue to meet my daughter outside at a park bench with a fresh sheet, throw it over my body to cover myself and hug her as though our lives depends on it.
And they do 🥰
Grazie Mille Bellissima
We feel for the way our lives have changed and missing the things that made it enjoyable. But I’m reminded by my 103 mother that her mantra is “Go with the flow”. Stop trying to swim up stream as it doesn’t work no matter how hard we try. Change the things that can be changed and the courage to know the difference. Although we have never met our lives have great memories for our many visits to Panicale and Paciano and the friends there. We were looking forward to spending our 50 and 51 anniversary there and making new friends but all that is on hold. The world is changing and no matter how hard we want it the way it was it’s not going back. So cherish what you have and listen to Andrea B. And Bobby Mc Ferin music and enjoy life. One day we hope to make the journey back to a place that time has forgotten. Ciao from Hawaii.
Hello Jeff from a cool and rainy Umbria. Thank you so much for your words. Your mother is a wise woman. It is difficult to learn to ‘go with the flow’ but such good advice. I do try to take comfort in the small things that bring me pleasure. I thought it important to share how I am really feeling and to admit that in every sunny dolce vita, a little rain must fall.
I do hope when you make it back to Panicale, we can meet and raise a glass – or two – to better times ahead.
Until then, stay safe.
Hello Anna, what a very good article you have written on what we are all experiencing. It was very thought provoking and compelling to read. I appreciate you are doing this… I know you say we are disconnected, but you are in this way connecting with persons you probably have no idea of. I told my sister about your articles and she is reading them now and telling her friends about them as well… so there you go. Perhaps we are disconnected pieces of a puzzle but when someone writes and shares with others then we are connecting. And whatever you write may make others think and talk and share with each other. We have no idea how important each of us are to other persons in the world, especially at this time. Most of us are not aware of our impact on others lives. So thanks for writing the pieces.
On that note, I cannot tell you how sick to death I am of not being able to hug my children. This Thanksgiving I’d had it… they wanted to come over, said they were all feeling well and we just wanted to spend some time with our family. So, over they came.
One of our sons’ is stuck teaching in Shanghai and can’t get out. He was going to come home this Christmas after being away for more than two years… now it will be stretching to three and I have no idea when I will be able to see him. And for all the technology going on over there in China, the connection to skype or face time is ridiculously bad, so we don’t even do that very much.
As I said, I haven’t seen him for over two years now, so that’s a hard row to hoe. Another son lives in Waterloo, Ontario and just bought a house in Kitchener. He is working there and studying for his Ph.D. He said he would be home in four years and now that has stretched to six and now they are moving to Kitchener because housing here is unaffordable. He lives with his girlfriend, whom he hopes to marry one day, as his wedding was canceled back in May due to Covid.
The rest did come over for Thanksgiving though. I have six children incidentally, five sons and one daughter. One son was sick with a cold and everyone stayed clear of him, but as he explained, it is cold and flu season, he has a cold, not covid. He had no fever and no sore throat, just a runny nose. While I didn’t like that at all, I hadn’t seen him for such a long time I broke down and told him to come anyway. My daughter Paige’s boyfriend was sick, so we asked her not to bring him. She came for a half hour and told us she was too uncomfortable being around us and worried she would make us sick as she’s living with him… so I ran around like a nutbar packing turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, anything I could fit into a tupperware container or ten. She was very thankful and said so… I said “I just want everyone to be happy, to have a nice meal, no matter where they are…”, So, I gave her a nice bottle of wine and the food, put my rain jacket on backward and hugged her and she left laughing.
Meanwhile my family had sat down to dinner without me and were about finished as I sat down to eat. I sat and ate my cold Thanksgiving dinner, but I didn’t care, any food at all with any of my family was wonderful.
Usually, we don’t hug goodbye or hello and we social distance as much as possible when visiting. The only problem is our grandson, who I don’t get to see that often because of covid… who doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘You can’t hug Grandpa or Nana…’ So we just let him go and hoped everything would be well. That’s all we could do, that’s all we can do.
It is ridiculous though that we now all sit and wait out the next two weeks, stay isolated and wonder if everything will be okay. We pray every day for our kids and our grandson (two years old now) and that’s all anyone can do in these terrible times.
I sit at home and write and try to fill the days and the hours and it is very difficult to do and keep positive. I found an old clock in my cupboard which my Mother used to own. I don’t know why I kept it even… On the hour another bird song goes off and it drives my husband nuts. But really, whenever that happens and I’m alone in the house, it’s silly, but I don’t feel so alone anymore, ’cause the birds are singing and my Mom used to listen to it all the time… so, you see, I am going a little crazy… lol.
Every day I hear no good news from the media and it makes me anxious and tired of it all. Every morning I get up and think at least I have my husband Brad to go for a walk with or talk to when he is finished work at the end of the day. Before he dozes off that is… but this thing has changed my life, our lives. We cannot go to church, once the churches opened up again (they only let in 50 persons at a time and do two masses per day), so this lets 100 parishioners go to church out of a flock of at least 700 persons… it’s ridiculous). Plus someone recently had covid at our church so we just stay away from there for the time being.
There is no one to visit in the hospital, no one is allowed in the hospitals, and Delta hospital is admitting no one at this time as they are breaking out in covid… no one to cheer up, no way to volunteer because of our age group, not supposed to hang with the neighbours, everyone seems suspicious of each other and some days I feel like I’m losing it… however, whenever that happens I spend the days just trying to use my imagination to cook new things, write poetry or something to make one of my kids laugh etc. We are all disconnected at this time.
My daughter recently graduated from S.F.U. There is no film work here at this time, Hollywood North has shut down and this is what she graduated in… editing to be precise. She loves editing and can’t find a job and can’t even apply for that work yet. I feel bad for her, she sits at her apartment and is finishing her film to send out… but she and her friends, they are young and want to be out with each other and have fun and go dancing and partying and they can’t at this time.
The only fun Brad and I have is watching what the U.S. President is going to say next. However, I keep going and the longs walks in the fresh air along the dike do a lot of good and bike riding and singing, I love to sing, even if it’s only to myself… wait a minute, it is only to myself, and the walls.
I am reminded at times of an older movie I saw called Shirley Valentine. It was originally a play then made into a movie. The main actress is alone at home and she is talking to the walls of her house because she is so isolated and bored… this is pretty much what I am doing at this time. She also ran away to Greece, but I can’t do that right now.
Also, we didn’t vacation anywhere this summer, even in B.C., it’s just too risky. I am personally going house crazy… at least you have your lovely orchard to walk in and I have a the long road in Ladner toward the dike… I cannot believe what people in apartments are going through, I’d go completely koo koo.
I know it is hard, but keep going and know that you can trust in God. And keep writing these lovely pieces, they keep me going and cheer me up just to know that someone else out there is experiencing the same things. Take care Anna… t.f.