May 3, 2020: Het Achterhuis vs COVID-19 Quarantine -
About a year ago, we were going through boxes of old stuff in
the basement, and I came across a photo from our high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank.
That’s me and my (then, and still) friend Jim, playing Anne
and Peter.
No, really. That’s me, and that’s Jim. It was a long time ago.
Recently, I have heard a few people compare their own cabin
fever, during our current quarantine, to what it must have felt like in the Secret
Annex for the Frank family and the others hiding out with them. (You know how grouchy I got about “silver
lining?” Well, here I go again.)
I really object to this comparison. But I’m not going to
belabor the point. If you think what you
are feeling - after a few weeks-to-months of avoiding the virus and trying to
flatten the curve and staying home and missing your friends - is truly comparable
to what those folks went through, I’m not even going to argue with you.
What I will say is that I flashed back to the (wonderful,
life-changing) experience of performing in that play, a week or so ago, quite unexpectedly.
Which is to say, I made the connection too, but more by way of contrast than
comparison.
I was out walking the dog in the very early morning, and I realized
that my favorite pair of jeans (technically not sweat pants, so I was pretty
dressed up, in terms of quarantine fashion, right?) had just about worn
through. The flashback was to the first
entrance in the play, when Anne and her family appear in the Secret Annex,
having fled their homes wearing as many layers of clothing as they can possibly
manage.
Everybody enters, and Anne
starts peeling off the layers, and her mother gets rattled because it’s not
very ladylike to strip down like that. But they had to take as many clothes
with them as they could, since who knows how long they will be in hiding? And
they had to wear all those clothes, because if they’d gone down the street with
suitcases, that would have drawn attention and tipped off the authorities that they
were heading someplace.
So what I thought about when I reached down to brush something off my thigh and
realized the fabric had nearly given out was: I must order another pair of
these online. I bet I can find the SKU on the label and hunt for them that way.
Piece of cake.
And then, in one of those mood swings that I think a lot of
us are having these days, I got all choked up about being SO DAMN LUCKY, right
now. I am SO DAMN LUCKY that if I need a new pair of jeans, I can go online and
order them. I don’t have to live for the next year or two, making do with
only the clothing I had at the beginning of the pandemic. I can get more
clothes, right now.
This may not seem like something
to cry over, but it turned out it was.
Yes, it is hard to credit the people who make these comparisons. Some people are suffering more than others in this quarantine, of course, and I think both your family and mine are lucky that we're both in the "less suffering" category. But nobody's in the-Nazis-will-kill-me-if-they-find-me territory.
ReplyDeleteI am treating this as a dry run for retirement: Would I hate being home, miss being around patrons, co-workers, hate all the free time and relative dearth of social interaction? Would Adrienne and I drive each other nuts?
Turns out the answer to those questions is mostly "no". I *do* miss my work friends, and I do have enough work to do that I can fill my days easily, but I also have a lot of free time and it's pretty much up to me *when* I want to work (with a few exceptions) and I find myself being *unable to get to things* that I want to do each day. That is, I don't feel the old "I have too much time on my hands" regret. So...retirement living is looking very doable for me! Even though I'm not planning to retire any time soon.
But it's nice to have evidence proving I wasn't just kidding myself when I felt that I'd thrive in retirement and not regret it like many people who retire and then are bored with their lives.
When I lost my job in 2008, and took 19 months to find the next one, I had the same "dry run" feeling (except that I had to job hunt, though not 40 hours a week). I'd always feared I would go mad without work, but I was fine. It was good to know, as you say.
DeleteYou'll be fine, and it's good to know that. And you'll be unable to get to things that you want to do each day. And it's actually good to know THAT, too. Plus, you'll be unable to get to a lot of the things you don't want to do, but thought you would do if you had the time - and then it turns out they aren't just low priority, they are NO priority. And that, too, is valuable info.
I also still marvel that you, who are only 50% Jewish, somehow made yourself look 30% more Jewish for that role. (You're a solid 80% Jewish in that pic, is what I'm saying.) Way to commit to the role!
ReplyDeleteI still have what it takes to get pretty close to 80%. It's a skill.
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