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Saturday, October 16, 2021

COVID Chronicles XXIII: The Great Resignation II: How I am Resigned

 






During the past 8 or 10 months, I have dreamt, at least weekly, that I am at a family reunion.  It is always pleasant and I feel a little sad on awakening to discover that I have been dreaming.  The dream is about a wish to be with my family, but also to reunite with the human family.  We have been estranged from each other for a very long time.

The dream reunion is with my father’s family.  When I was a child, my father and his two brothers’ families would get together every Thanksgiving.  With spouses, children, and grandmother we numbered between 15 and twenty.  We lived in three different northern states and would stay in one home, all together, cots lined up in the basement for the kids.

Cousins are a special breed of relative.  They are close enough in age to be good playmates, but because we don’t live together, there aren’t the kinds of conflicts that emerge between siblings.  I was friends with my cousins the way I would later become friends with my siblings, when we were old enough not to be quite so competitive and to be able to appreciate the differences between us rather than to try to exploit them.

The dream is a dream of the present day.  The cousins are now grown, with kids of our own, and even a few grandkids.  In reality, we no longer get together every year, but for occasions – weddings mostly but also for funerals; first for my grandmother and more recently for my father and for his brother’s wife, my aunt.  We have also gotten together in smaller groups to celebrate anniversaries or graduations. 

So when the announcement of my cousin’s wedding reception arrived this summer, I was excited.  We couldn’t go to the wedding itself last year because of COVID.  We watched it via zoom, which was less satisfying than kissing through a screen door would have been.

My entire branch of the family was excited by the reunion.  We all made travel plans.  COVID looked like it would be vanquished and we could finally be together.  Even the reluctant stepdaughters thought it would be fun to connect with this fun loving side of my family.

But COVID, our constant companion, returned.  And, since the wedding was in Texas, many were concerned about the lax local approach to managing the pandemic.  The numbers did not look good as a third surge raged.  My brother, who is selling his house and worldly possessions and moving with his wife to St. Thomas thought they could make it as one final connection with the family, but the crush of moving caught up with them. By last weekend, I was the sole representative of my Dad’s family.  Our branch was whittled to a twig.

The irony is that I am probably the one in the family who least likes to travel.  This is also the busiest time of year for me and I can ill afford to spend time away from work (though I was able to get a lot of work done on the plane, in a hotel room by myself, and I was, because we are now in the state we are, able to teach by Zoom).  But my dream was calling me.  I could not resist the pull towards community.

And I am very glad that I went.  I had rich and meaningful conversations with many people.  I caught up on family gossip and had fun just hanging out.  We were careful about masks until the after reception when the dancing started and, I swear, I was the only masked person in the place.  Later I found out that family members on both the bride and groom’s side were figuring that all of the guests were vaccinated.  But did they ask about the band?  (It is a week later and, knock on wood, I don’t have any symptoms yet and have not heard that others do).

A central topic of conversation was the great resignation.  A cousin who is a physician had an experience that closely mirrors mine.  For the past twenty years, she has worked for one of the top hospitals in the country.  When COVID hit, the hospital cut physician’s pay and quit contributing to their retirement and demanded that the physicians (and presumably the rest of the staff) work more hours because of increased patient demands.  Unlike me (but like many of my colleagues), she decided to quit working for them, and the family has moved to be closer to my uncle.  She is doing locum tenens work until she can find the kind of job she wants – part time with no evening or weekend work.  Without COVID she, and many of her colleagues who also resigned, would have continued where she was for another twenty years.

Her husband lived for a year on St. Thomas, where my brother is headed.  That cousin is envious of my brother's decision to buy a boat and move onto it.  My cousin is trying to whittle down his possessions, and he recognizes that living on a boat means never being tempted to impulse buy anything - because there is simply no place to put anything.  He wonders, though, about whether my brother and his wife will like living on an island - it is a small place, he cautions.  Kind of like living in our COVID concentrated worlds, I'm thinking.

A cousin with younger kids, quit her job so that she could manage the kid's schooling.  First their school shut down without notice.  Then, when it started up, classes were cancelled without notice and then their kids were sent home regularly when they were exposed to the virus.  The havoc that was wreaked in their lives and in her professional life became unmanageable and she resigned to manage the kids and their schoolwork while her husband continued to work.  

The cousins who were in High School and College were affected much as my kids have been.  One had his senior year of high school at home, over zoom.  He has now started community college and has only started to meet some of his classmates as some classes have returned to in person (with masks), though many are still remote.  He reported that the in person classes were vastly superior to those online – he feels connected to his teacher and to the other students in a way that he does not in classes that are being taught remotely.

At the same time, many cousins are preparing for a post COVID world in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.  One very thoughtful cousin is thinking about a career in the performing arts – an incredibly competitive field.  I listened to his father have a conversation with another cousin who has had success in the performing arts.  They talked about whether it made sense to get additional training or to simply try to get auditions, as she had done.  She acknowledged the tremendous amount of luck that went into her success.  The next morning, the very poised high school wannabe performer talked soberly about the various paths that could lead to different types of careers on stage, but also behind the scenes and the risks and benefits of each of these paths.

As we work to craft dream driven lives, we encounter obstacles the dreams haven’t anticipated.  The triple threat of COVID, climate change, and the ways that George Floyd’s death have caused us to rethink the structural (dis)advantages built into our system have contributed to my relational family and the family of human beings reassessing how we will structure our individual lives.  The great resignation – an unprecedented number of people walking away from jobs, partly as a result of having a safety net that will protect them as they regroup – is leading to a very broad re-thinking of what it means to live a good life.

My own life, one that has been led successfully (and sometimes not so successfully) pursuing a variety of dreams has felt at times like a high wire walk over the fear that a misstep will lead to financial ruin.  I have been frugal throughout my life, and, in the last half of it, conservative about pursuing things that might have involved financial risk.  At the same time, I realize that I have been extremely privileged and much of my anxiety has been manufactured.  I think that I would not have been in as much peril as I might have imagined if I had struck out in less fettered ways to pursue self-indulgent or socially conscious goals.

My own resignation is of a different variety.  I am resigned to having led the life I have lived – and to thinking about how best to live the remainder.  I cannot undo what has been done, and I don’t have the wide open field of possibilities that my younger cousins do.  I fear for the planet – in much the same way, to this point, that I have feared for my financial future.  I work to contain my own carbon footprint where I can, and feel guilty about where I do not (including flying to a family reunion in the midst of a pandemic).  Will I be more proactive with the last (what I hope to be) third of my life?

In a conversation with another middle aged cousin, one who is also an artist, he had resigned himself to moving from a position that appeared to be a dead end, to being offered an opportunity within that organization to play a starring role.  His performances will occur in March.  A number of us will convene to observe and celebrate that performance.  He talked movingly about the ways in which he dedicates himself to prepare for an ephemeral performance – one that lasts only as long as he and the audience are in contact with each other.  We all, I suppose, do this.  Not just within our profession, but within our lives.  We perform whatever we do, and leave whatever trace in the world that we do.  We leave that trace with our friends and family and in our neighborhood, and collectively that trace seems ephemeral; but, in fact, those actions can have far reaching consequences, for good and evil.

As we celebrate my cousin's performance in March, we will also be celebrating his marriage.  He is marrying a man who helps him, he says, realize that there is a world beyond the singular world of the performances to which he devotes himself.  This brings balance to his life, but also joy.  I know the joy firsthand.  I feel it in the presence of his husband and of their love for each other.  I also feel it in the love – much of it complicated – that my families feel for each other – both my family of kin and this family we all share – the family of humans.  As we become resigned to our limits, I hope that we also keep our eyes open to the possibilities that lie before us.

 To access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here.  For a subject based index, link here. 

To subscribe to posts (which occur 2-3 times per month), please try using the service at the top of the page.  I have had difficulty with these and am looking for something better, but these are what I have at this moment. 

  For other posts on COVID:

I:       Apocalypse Now  my first posting on COVID-19.
II:      Midnight in Paris  is a jumping off point for more thinking about COVID.  (Also in Movies).
III:    Hans Selye and the Stress Response Syndrome.  COVID becomes more normal... for now.
VI:    Get back in that classroom  Paranoid ruminations.
VII:   Why Shutting Classes Makes Fiscal Sense A weak argument
XIII: Ennui
XIV. Where, Oh Where have my in-person students gone?  Split zoom classes in the age of COVID.
XVIII.    I miss my mask?
IXX.      Bo Burnham's Inside Commentary on the commenter.


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