“The year 2021 has been like a roller coaster. It was supposed to be the year the pandemic fizzled out. Instead, it was a year of intense whiplash.” — Julie Ries
“It’s not over, till it’s over!” — Yogi Bera
This dispatch is part holiday season review, 2021 year-end wrap up, plus a look ahead, and once again, an acceptance of opposing conditions, that things both change and remain the same. It has been a year characterized by both hope and despair, gratitude and grief, and resistance and surrender.
The past year — or 22 months — depending on how you want to count — we’ve been riding the coronacoaster of the COVID pandemic. There have been highs and lows on this ride, whiplash, and screams. We want to get off this ride, yet we can’t until it’s over.
“We have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a COVID update in Geneva. “Even if omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.”
“It’s not vaccines instead of masks. It’s not vaccines instead of distancing. It’s not vaccines instead of ventilation or hand hygiene. Do it all. Do it consistently. Do it well,” Tedros said.
COVID Cases
A little background for those new to my Dispatch from the Hideout series:
I began my Dispatch from the Hideout as a one-off essay in July 2017 to describe my reaction to events in the world and my need to retreat. I was also grieving the losses in my life, the most recent at the time was my mother’s death in 2016. I introduced the series as follows:
Now, before I go any further, it’s important that I share with you that my hideout is a virtual one. I don’t have a cabin in the woods, or a bunker in the basement, I only have my home, a 645 square foot apartment. It’s where I wake up in the morning, retreat at the end of the work day, hideout on the weekends when I’m writing or feeling introverted, and end my days, often falling asleep on the couch watching TV. Yeah, I’m that girl. I live alone and most days I’m happy with that choice.
I discovered that the Dispatch from the Hideout metaphor was a useful vehicle for me to express innermost feelings, like grief and gratitude, moments when I faced my shadow, or questioned my choices, plus the times when I reflected on the larger world of which I’m simply a member, navigating things outside of my control, yet still have an impact on my heart, mind, and spirit. The Hideout metaphor served me and soon became a series.
Circling back to the end of February 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, I was forced to spend more time in the Hideout to protect my physical health, safer-at-home. I soon discovered that the isolation also affected my mental, emotional, and spiritual health. When the Wisconsin Historical Society launched the Wisconsin Historical Society COVID-19 Journal Project, I was all in, and to date, including this essay, I’ve contributed nineteen installments about my experience as I shelter-in-place, plus the four musings that preceded them.
There are links to the entire Dispatch series at the end of this essay plus related reading.
2021 Holiday Season
The past month can best be summarized as making — then breaking — holiday plans with friends and family — both bio and chosen. I’m grateful that the single holiday celebration I was able to keep and enjoy was the visit with my father in our hometown the weekend before Christmas joined by my sister, Tami, her husband, Ron, and nephew Quinn and niece, Gemma.
Lenzke-Beirne-Reschke Family Christmas
It was the second of three holiday gatherings for our 91-year-old father. The first with brother, Rick, visiting from Colorado and yesterday’s Christmas dinner delivered by sister, Kelly, and her husband, Bill. Dad was able to see all of his children and though we chose not to be together this year, our father remained safe and healthy. Grateful.
I scheduled a couple of days off of work using accrued personal time, plus the holidays, and created what has become a Holiday Winter Staycation. It would be a mix of time with friends and family, time alone at home to write, and check-off things on my ‘to-do if I want to list.’
The first in-person casualty was the annual Women’s Holiday Potluck and White Elephant Gift Exchange (click on this link for the first women’s potluck I attended), an evening with a larger circle of new and old friends characterized by good food (including the host’s limit on hummus!) and a rollicking White Elephant Gift Exchange. It was cancelled last year too so many of us were looking forward to this year’s return. I accepted an invitation to join Pod Squad members for their Christmas Open House. I made plans with two of my ex-partners, now chosen family members, to get together between the holidays. Sister Tami and my niece and nephew, made plans to see a movie in the theater, Licorice Pizza, a tradition for me to see one or more films during a winter staycation. All of those plans in the end were cancelled due to concerns about the raging surge of the omicron virus.
COVID Risks
Instead, like last year, I celebrated a ‘home alone holiday’. I did the same for Thanksgiving this year. For my non-secular Christmas meal, I made a honey-glazed spiral ham with cheesy hash browns, mixed berry fruit bowl with whipped cream, applesauce, and King Hawaiian sweet rolls. I streamed content and watched a documentary On Demand including, Julia, Spencer, Don’t Look Up, and episodes of an apocalyptic limited-series, Station Eleven, the latter two choices made the pandemic holiday more ironic.
Lastly, I reminisced about Christmas, rereading a series of Mixed Metaphors, Oh My! blog essays, including holidays past, Full Moon on Christmas Day: Part I and a look ahead to Christmas holidays in the future, Full Moon on Christmas Day: Part II and lastly the last time my family celebrated Christmas together, How I Became the Grinch This Christmas.
Lenzke Family Christmas 2018
2021 Year-in-Review
The first seven months of 2021, I worked a hybrid schedule in my half-time role as the LGBTQ+ AODA Advocate for our LGBTQ+ Community Center. Two days in the office, two days from home, three-day weekends. Zoom became the tool to facilitate recovery meetings, participate in training webinars, collaborate with community partners, and produce PowerPoint programs and present virtually to the public.
In February and March, I received both Pfizer vaccinations. In August, we reopened to the public when Dane County, Wisconsin changed the guidelines for in-person gatherings. I returned to working in the office full-time for my half-time schedule. In September, I received the flu shot, followed later in the month with the Pfizer booster.
In other health news, I began working with an osteoarthritis team which included nutrionists, physical therapists, a physician assistant, orthopedic doctor, and a psychologist coach. Between a family history of osteoarthritis in knees and hips, lack of exercise, diet, and loss of muscle mass due to the pandemic, I was in need of a health intervention. Finding a psychologist to explore the root of my food and exercise issues was the surprising gift of the experience.
As a cinephile the past year, I only saw three films in the theater. I streamed lots of content on multiple platforms and On Demand. For in-person contact, I limited it to Pod Squad friends and family that we created in 2020. I did venture out to dine in a restaurant on a number of occasions with Pod Squad members until it became too risky again due to the surge of the omicron variant.
The events of the year can best be summed up by the tragic loss of life due to natural disasters, an increase in criminal gun violence, school and police shootings, the unnecessary loss of life to COVID, especially the unvaccinated, the heroic contributions to society by healthcare, frontline, and essential workers, the events of January 6th, the increased partisan political and cultural divide, the shameful lies and hate-speech by Republican and right-wing legislators at all levels of government and their conspiracy theories, plus their Fox News and radio and podcast enablers, regressive legislation affecting voting rights and women’s right to choose, and finally the impending dissolution of our democracy. Oh, my!
Partisan COVID Deaths
The uninvited guest. Illustration Credit: Volker Maunz
A Look Ahead
Though the 2021 Year-in-Review portends a potentially bleak and apocalyptic future, I remain a person who continues to look at the glass half-full. Perhaps I’m a little pollyannish, though I like to think of it as optimistic; we will rise from the shadow cast on our planet, government, health, prosperity, freedom of speech, assembly, and choice, and the good and humanity in us will prevail. It’s time again, when were asked to learn what to hold unto, and what and who to let go, grief and gratitude.
Glass Half-Full
“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.” ― W. Somerset Maugham
Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
Dispatch from the Hideout COVID-19 Journal Series
(In order of most recent to oldest)
Dispatch from the Hideout: Hip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!
Dispatch from the Hideout: Love in a Pandemic 2.0
Dispatch from the Hideout: Omicron Edition
Dispatch from the Hideout: Pod Squad 2.0
Dispatch from the Hideout: Two Steps Back
Dispatch from the Hideout: My Post-Pandemic Life
Dispatch from the Hideout: Exit Strategy
Dispatch from the Hideout: A Shot in the Arm
Dispatch from the Hideout: Love in a Pandemic
Dispatch from the Hideout: The End Is Here!
Dispatch from the Hideout: Riding the Coronacoaster
Dispatch from the Hideout: Staycation Edition
Dispatch from the Hideout: Letter to Loved Ones
Dispatch from the Hideout: Quarantine Bubble Edition
Dispatch from the Hideout: What Was, What Will Be
Dispatch from the Hideout: Back to Life
Dispatch from the Hideout: Stirred Crazy
Dispatch from the Hideout: Home Alone Easter Holiday
Dispatch from the Hideout: Home Alone Edition
Dispatch from the Hideout: Pandemic Edition
Dispatch from the Hideout: Social Distancing
Additional Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
Additional Installments of the Dispatch from the Hideout Series
Dispatch from the Hideout: Premature Hibernation
Hibernation & the Holidays: Retreat to the Hideout
Another Dispatch from the Hideout
Related Reading on the Omicron Variant