More thoughts from quarantine: visits to the past

I heard on NPR (how most of my sentences start these days— is this what it means to be an adult?) that people are having more vivid dreams since quarantine started. Almost every night I remember what I dreamt and how I felt and often still feel it in my chest long after I wake up. But it’s not just dreams, it’s every time I close my eyes. I’ve always been a daydreamer, lying awake to fantasize about the future, dream up vacations, plan our next visit to see my dad in the desert or my mom in Japan, decide what delicious spot we should try next time we go to the beach, picture our forever home which I had always envisioned we’d be in this year... The first few weeks I was okay with putting my daydreams on hold, because that’s what all of life felt like— one giant pause button. Zoom was kind of funny. Neighborhood walks were nice. My husband and I could bond. When months kept passing but COVID cases kept rising there was the shift we all made into “the new normal.” Zoom was a chore. Walks in the neighborhood were an eerie reminder of what the world has become. There was a sense of mourning that this summer wasn’t going to be filled with road trips and backyard barbecues. Then there was a sense of mourning that this year wasn’t going to be the productive and milestone-filled year I imagined it would be back in January, a lifetime ago. Marathon? Cancelled. Career switch? Not possible. More “me time”? Yeah, right. And recently, I can’t make heads or tails out of the future so I find myself thinking about the past.

I’ve always been heavy on nostalgia, reaching for the scents, sounds, and sights of my past. Leave me in quarantine with days that bleed into months (I started this blog post in April and it is now almost August) and lying awake past 1AM even though I know full well that my daughter is going to be up by by 6 and I’m seeped in it as if it’s some homemade salve, protecting my skin from this unprecedented moment full of unseen pain, losses, and perpetual fear we all find ourselves in. When I close my eyes (or sometimes even when they’re open—glazed over from lack of sleep and too much/not enough caffeine) I travel back to specific places, places I haven’t thought about in years or, maybe, ever. I keep finding myself in the back of my grandparent’s closet in their home on Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills. In my memory it was reminiscent of the Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe— small from the outside but spacious and full of wonder on the inside. I remember a window— but this could also be the small window above the built in dresser from my college days at Berkeley, an equally musty walk-in closet made of dark wood and plenty of clothes for dress up. In my grandparent’s closet I remember a life-size jewelry cabinet and a trunk full of vibrant scarves, hats and sashes. I remember the thrill of rifling through my grandmother’s things and the discoveries I’d make each time no matter how many times I entered her closet. I also remember she wasn’t really around. Busy with the restaurant perhaps? In the other room fixing up her own appearance?

I’ve also been finding myself in the tatami room at my grandparent’s house in Yamaguchi, Japan, in particular, the in-between space separating the room where I slept every summer ever since I could remember and the compact, outdoor garden where I spent little to no time in for reasons I don’t totally understand. This space had sliding glass doors to the garden on one side and shoji sliding doors on the other. And it was very muggy. The AC unit didn’t travel to this area and I was always in Japan during the hot, humid summers. But I remember sitting in this little nook feeling comforted by the sudden warmth, as I looked outside at the tiny garden. An occasional stray kitten would walk by searching for food. The cicadas would start to buzz. Time lingered here. Or it wasn’t a consideration at all. I just sat and be.

During these last few months I spend the majority of my time traveling from the kitchen to my daughter’s room and back multiple times a day. I spend another significant amount of time on the floor next to her crib while she falls asleep holding my hand and I stare at the ceiling. I hear the nightly 8pm cheer for the hospital workers. That’s when I know it’s probably safe to sneak out. While that is my daily life, in my dream life I keep finding myself in these places of my past. Places I had long forgotten or never really considered. My heart aches a little when I’m there. I think about my paternal grandmother and how the last time I spoke to her, I postponed a lunch date we were supposed to have at her new condo. She was about to embark on a new chapter in her life when a fall turned her into a vegetable. I think about my maternal grandfather and despite the fact that he was a shitty father to my mother, famously a pain in the ass to everyone around him, and addicted to both gambling and alcohol, I knew and felt his love. I’m sorry we were never able to communicate on a level beyond my elementary Japanese.

Perhaps these hours, weeks, months that just feel like one big groundhog’s day is the same as time suspended in the hot muggy air of Yamaguchi or the dark and dusty closet of Beverly Hills. I’ll look back at this time of my life where the days were long and feel nostalgic for our rent controlled apartment, its crumbling walls and cracked tiles, and windows that we crank open in the summer but can never get closed again. I’ll think about my little girl’s first steps tentative, then confident and barreling down the hallway a hundred times a day. I’ll think about the many iterations of our living room layout which accommodated our 20-something aspirational selves to our 30-something married life to our new parent life to our quarantined life. As a writer and artist, I’m addicted to finding narratives, themes, always trying to organize the moments of my life into a cohesive story that makes me feel like everything was meant to be this way after all. It keeps me out of regret and keeps me moving forward. As much as I am heavy on nostalgia, I’m heavy on optimism. But perhaps there is no rhyme or reason (can one make sense of a pandemic let alone parenting during a pandemic?), no dots to connect, just moments and spaces to be. As a perpetual dreamer I tend to think about all the things I could and should be doing, planning, preparing, contemplating. Part of it is me, but part of it is our Western culture of doing not being. Now that life’s rhythm is vastly different, these memories are reminders that being is enough, that visiting these quiet spaces from my past is a worthy trip in itself, that a closet for dress up, a view of a garden, and holding my daughter’s hand as she falls asleep are beautiful as is, they need no explanation.

Pulled to the Present by Self-Quarantine

Three weeks ago, the last time I physically set foot in a grocery store, I could barely make it out of the car to go in my anxiety was so high. I had no sanitizer, no wipes and a fussy toddler strapped to my chest. Three weeks ago, the shuttered shops on Sunset were an eerie sight. Three weeks ago the world changed. Today it’s all still strange, but this new normal has resulted in some unexpected, refreshing changes. I go outside once a day simply for the sake of being outside, feeling sunshine on my skin, breathing fresh air, looking at the sky without the filter of my bedroom window. Once a day I meditate, at first as a coping tool for my anxiety that bubbled to the surface from the existential threat of contracting the virus seemingly from anyone, anything, anywhere, from the immediate threat of three humans—two adult and one just beginning to figure out this world—under one suddenly smaller roof, from the first-world-problems’ discomfort of not knowing when I can access garlic or toilet paper again, from the general uncertainty of the future. But 21 days in, this daily meditation practice has become habit—a habit I’ve been wanting to cultivate since forever. Also, at least once a day, usually at night, I journal. A little about the day, the latest outbreak news and stats, but mostly about what I’m grateful for. Another habit I’d been meaning to establish.

Between the walks outside, the meditations, and the journaling, and of course the general pause that’s been placed on typical daily life around the world, what’s added up is a certain stillness, peacefulness, and focus. Did the birds always chirp this much? Were there always these many squirrels in the neighborhood? Oh, yeah, ladybugs. And lizards. And gophers. How I’d forgotten. And bees! Are flowers more vibrantly colored this spring? Did the breeze blowing through the bougainvillea always make that shuffling sound? Could I always hear the cars driving on Sunset Blvd? Sounds like someone is working on their backyard. Another plane overhead far away. A motorcycle revs its engine. So many birds.  

The strange thing is, this certain quiet, this pull to the present, it’s all sort of familiar. When I walk the mostly empty neighborhood streets, noticing the stunning succulents and herbs and lemon trees in people’s front yards or the yellow and purple wildflowers growing rampant in empty lots in between, when I stare out the window while I meditate not looking at anything in particular but seeing the gentle sway of the palm trees’ palms in my periphery or a flock of birds fly across my field of vision, when I put pen to paper in my journal as I’ve done since I was seven or eight years old, and can hear my husband watching TV or chatting on the phone in the other room, when I play a favorite song to move my body just because it feels good, when I have moments where I’m doing anything in particular so I grab a snack of crackers and almond butter, when I want to hang out with my friends but I can’t so I talk on the phone for hours instead, I feel a welcome sense that I’ve been here before. These moments. Granted, I’m prone to painting everything with a wide brush of nostalgia. It’s sort of my default. But when was the last time the days felt long? When afternoons lingered? When the natural light coming through the windows shifted so gradually it didn’t occur to me to turn on the lights until I was making dinner? When any solitary time wasn’t truly alone, but with the chattering of a child in another room. When was the last time I listened to a song from start to finish as I lay on the living room floor or danced around aimlessly in my bedroom? When was the last time I went weeks without driving? When was the last time I remembered all my dreams? When was the time I stayed up late reading because I had nowhere to be the next morning? When was the last time I walked around the suburbs at three in the afternoon because where else could I go? When I was a child.

When I was a child I couldn’t imagine that far into the future. The days were long. I noticed the buzzing of life outside because it was all a little mysterious. I didn’t know how not to be in the present. As an adult all I do is project into the future, stress about how fast time goes, and figure out ways to break out of my latest rut. Add a child to the mix and future worries are never ending, time goes faster, and ruts linger. But now this. This collective moment we’re in. This here, and now. It’s shed light where I wasn’t looking because I was too busy looking anywhere but right here. And now I’m so grateful for everything I’ve been able to see:

·      The woman in the checkout line who let me go in front of her and helped me unload my grocery cart.

·      The farmer’s market vendor who gave me 6 more tangerines on top of the 6 I had just purchased from him.

·      Improving my husband and my communication tenfold.

·      Having mandatory family bonding time.

·      Getting organized.

·      Appreciating seltzer water, avocados, eggs, fresh baked goods, garlic, and pasta much more than usual.

·      Professional yoga classes from the comfort of my bedroom.

·      Forced to sit and be with my thoughts, confronted by my true wants and needs without all the typical background noise of life.

·      The peacefulness of a simple neighborhood stroll.

·      The novelty of bumping into someone you know in real life and valuing live, in-person connection.

·      The beauty of a blank screen waiting to be filled with words.