REFLECTIONS

As we all approach the official one year mark for the pandemic I find myself reflecting on this past year.  At first it seemed as though the year would never end, but I’m really amazed at how quickly it did seem to pass.  With the loss of international travel and the local quilt retreats I normally attend there’s been an abundance of extra time for the activities I like to pursue.  I started to think about the things that kept me going in 2020.

EXERCISE

For five years I’ve worked out hard at my neighborhood gym.  Suddenly that came to an abrupt end.  Before I had joined the gym I used to walk in the community where I live.  Exercise is one of those habits that I actually enjoy and look forward to doing at least 4-5 mornings a week.  It’s my way of starting off each day.  So last March I found myself lacing up my tennis shoes and hitting the pavement rather than heading off to the gym.  I live where it’s quite hilly so no matter which direction I start off on I’m either going uphill or downhill at some point.  

I’ve found that in a week I can walk a different route each day, some routes being much more strenuous than other ones.  Walking outside has been very therapeutic during these difficult times.  It also does wonders to clear my head and sort things out.

Over several months into the pandemic I was able to buy some necessary equipment to insure I kept up my strength training which was such an integral part of my previous gym workouts.  I bought a stretching band, various sized exercise bands, a 1” thick yoga mat (my favorite item) and exercise bars to use with some of my husbands 60 year old weights.  That enabled me to have my own hand weights just like I used at the gym.  My last purchase was a kettlebell which pleased me greatly.  I had really been missing doing kettlebell swings!  So one year later I’m still getting a good workout and loving every minute of it.

COOKING

Even though I’ve been cooking meals for more than 50 years it’s something I still enjoy doing.  I love to experiment and try new meals and I never repeat the same meal two weeks in a row.  I like to keep track of what I make so I can refer back to previous weeks and see what I've made.

It was amazing at the beginning of the pandemic what food items became scarce and extremely difficult to find.  Luckily I was able to substitute what I had for what I couldn't get.  Although getting my hands on a bag of flour became my quest since I was just about out of it and there isn’t a substitute for regular flour.  I was soon to discover one of the main reasons why there was a flour shortage.  While people everywhere were on lockdown, making bread had become quite popular.  One of my friends tried to replace her old bread machine and they were sold out everywhere on line so she had to rely on her old machine.  Luckily for her it still worked.  That explained where all the flour was going.  All I wanted was enough flour to occasionally make buttermilk biscuits and some cookies.

One of the major suppliers for restaurants that normally is only open to restaurant owners suddenly found themselves with supplies just sitting on the shelves, so they opened their warehouses to the general public.  I went there just to see what they had, which was everything you can imagine a restaurant uses.  It was like Costco on steroids!  Most of the items were in huge quantities, much more than I could ever use.  I had great luck in the frozen food section of the warehouse though.  Except for the fact that I almost froze to death inside there, I bought various seafood for much less than I could anywhere else.  I also stocked up on frozen vegetables.

All in all it was definitely worth it to shop there.  But I scored big time when I loaded my “25 lb. bag of flour” into the back of my car!  And I only paid $7.49 for those 25 lbs.  What a steal!!

I ended up sharing my flour with several of my friends who would set up a time to stop by my front porch where I had a gallon ziplock bag of flour waiting for them.  What I kept for myself was stored in my freezer and it took almost a year to use it all up.

SEWING/QUILTING

I know what writer’s block is but never thought that I could have “quilter’s block”, though that’s exactly what I had the first 3 or 4 months of the pandemic.  With nothing but time on my hands I should have been in my sewing room every day turning out beautiful quilts like crazy.  But that’s not what happened.  The only thing I sewed for weeks on end were masks for family, friends, and to donate.  They were small and fast to make with no creativity involved.  I just wasn't interested in starting any quilting project.  Even a closet full of colorful fabrics wasn’t enough to move me in the right direction.  I had lost my creative mojo!  This had never happened to me before.  As the months went on I was to discover that others felt the same way.  Even a professional watercolor artist I know said she hadn’t painted a canvas in many months.

It was sometime during the summer months that I found myself thinking about quilt designs again and slowly but surely my creative juices started to bubble and flow once again.  I’m pretty sure seeing many of my quilting friends on Zoom get togethers gave me the nudge I needed.  My passion for designing and quilting had finally returned and with it my sense of joy for something I truly love doing.  I’ve been a busy bee working on one project after another and eventually I’ll share some of these quilts on my blog.

GENEALOGY

My husband and I always enjoy the tv show “Finding Your Roots” with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.  My husband had researched his family roots many years ago and had written a summary of what he found to share with his siblings and our family.  So during the first month of the pandemic I decided to spend some time working on my family’s genealogy since it was something I had intended to do for a long time but never found the time.  All of a sudden I had nothing but time. 

I got out all the paperwork I had accumulated from my relatives and from some previous research I had done.  I decided to use the Family Search website to set up my family tree.  I was completely hooked the first day I started doing this.  I ended up spending hours every day working on my tree and viewing what generations of unknown family members had contributed to this “joint tree” we were all a part of.  Just like Jack in the Beanstalk it seemed to grow larger and larger with each passing day.  There were so many sources, census records, and birth and death certificates listed by people who were related to this “tree” that was also my tree.

Eventually I grew tired of working on this and set it aside so I could pursue other endeavors.  It’s taken me a year to come to a satisfactory conclusion to what I had begun.  I now have an enormous family tree printed from the website tree, then cut and pasted onto a giant roll of paper I found in the garage from another project.  I’m extremely proud to know that on my father’s maternal side I can trace my roots back to the founding fathers of British Colonial America when more than a dozen of my 9th and 10th great grandparents arrived in this country from England.

STAYING SANE

Luckily I share my life with a husband whom I enjoy spending time with.  During this extremely difficult year we’ve found many different ways to keep life interesting and fun.  We’ve packed lunches and taken numerous drives into the local mountains and back country, where we've enjoyed hiking, or found quiet, out-of-the way little parks to sit and have a picnic.  Our folding chairs became a fixture in the back of the car so we could always have a seat no matter where we stopped.  We also became quite adept at eating a take-out meal in the back seat of the car where there was more room.  One of our favorite spots for a picnic has been on Shelter Island where we can watch all the sailboats on the bay and enjoy seeing our city’s downtown area.  These outings got us out of the house and were fun.

But what we looked forward to the most this past year was spending every other Saturday afternoon and evening at our son and daughter-in-law’s house.  Being there with them and our two grandsons was uplifting and refreshed our spirits.  My 14 year old grandson even taught me how to play “La Loteria” so I could practice my Spanish vocabulary.   My pronunciation and especially my husband’s had all of us doubled over with laughter.  Everybody knows there’s no better medicine for what ails you than a good belly laugh!  

And we’re still here a year later living, loving, and laughing together and feeling very lucky indeed!