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All I Really Need to Know I Learned on COVID Road

Writer's picture: cherylmurfincherylmurfin

Updated: Jun 16, 2021


Photo by Neil Espina / flickr.com/photos/peteker

My goodness, we’ve traveled some miles together, haven’t we?


If you’ve been following along through the various iterations of this blog, you’ve walked with me into a pub or ten in Britain, strolled among the rice paddies in Bali, hiked up ruins in Mexico, and made it all the way to the end of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage path in Spain and the West Highland Way in Scotland.


Remember when, on a wild hair, I almost purchased a bookstore in Florence, Italy? Later, when I fell on Parisian cobblestones and broke my face, your sympathetic responses to the aftermath photo were felt.

And now, for well more than a year, we’ve been “walking in place” together through an historic worldwide event, meeting on paths closer to my home as we waited out deadly pandemic.


All of the roads we’ve traveled have come to their end. And so it is time for this one.


Here in Seattle we’ve reached the somehow magical 70 percent “fully vaccinated” marker. The world directly around me, changed to be sure, is more and more resembling the one that shut down in March 2020. I’ve been looking for other signals that it’s time to wrap up this set of posts. The motherload arrived in the New York Times a few weeks ago: That Paris street that broke my face before COVID now, finally, welcomes my vaccinated return.


So, while I am sure NPR will continue reflecting on all things virus until done is done, this will be the last post along Pandemic Way for me.


Don’t delete me. It’s not the end of the blog. I’ll be back to share thoughts, creative writing, art and insights from future journeys soon. I just think it’s time to rip off the proverbial mask and breathe some fresh air into this space.


How to end this odd walk? I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what I hope I carry with me as I come out from under the dark cloud of viral threat. What are my takeaways from The COVID Year(ish)?


The big, big ones, of course, have been written about so widely I feel like a parrot repeating them:

  • A threatened planet will fight back. I just finished reading Albert Camus’ The Plague, by the way. It was first published in 1947. There simply can’t be a more prescient work on the topic of viruses as Mother Nature’s army. It’s all there. The wake up call. The constant ignoring of signs, not just by leaders, but by ordinary people resistant to change.

  • We need each other. In person. Being mostly alone has its ups and downs. I haven’t had to clean up after anyone else during the pandemic. But mostly humans are meant to commune, touch, connect face-to-face.

  • Black lives matter. Brown lives matter. Women — 50 percent of the Earth’s human population — matter. Thank you, COVID and George, for the wake-up call. Again. Again. Again

The pandemic has written these facts and calls to action on my heart in indelible ink.


Still, I hope a few other things I’ve found this year turn into lifelong commitments.


Takeway 1


Cooking and eating are two of life’s purest joys, most powerful soothers of sorrows, greatest

opportunities to be fully present.


Sure, I’ve eaten a lot of take-out over the past year. I’ve gone to a few restaurants and done the mask and plastic divider dance with the waitri. I’ve drunk a lot of wine.


But isolation and shut down also returned me to an old and lost love: preparing what I eat.

I find I have fallen hard for the whole beautiful process — the planning, the shopping, the chopping. Stirring, accidentally burning, starting over. I am grateful to the virus for unleashing a heretofore unknown talent for plating, and for making up dishes. I’ve found a gentle peace in the symmetry and sameness of my morning breakfast: a bowl of fruit, a muffin, a single cup of coffee, sometimes a beautiful morning light. It’s become almost a prayer.


I have to admit that through much of 2020 (and still now halfway through 2021) I looked forward to my meals with almost the same anticipation as Christmas when I was a child. I gave a great deal of thought to them. Kind of like my son, who in his earlier quirky years, would want to know what was for dinner the moment he woke up. Meals, mostly taken alone, felt like gifts. And I can only describe as blissful meals shared with my neighbor or, less frequently, my masked-up family during the most protective months.


This year I read How to Eat. It’s about mindful eating and was written by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh. Savoring each bite, chewing fully and mindfully, not wandering from the taste to thoughts of other things, is in fact, the essence of joy. And, according to this Zen Master, it’s a path toward world peace. He outlines what he calls “the five contemplations” of eating:

  1. “This food is a gift of the Earth, the sky, numerous living beings, and much hard and loving work.

  2. May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive this food.

  3. May we recognize and transform unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation.

  4. May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that reduces the suffering of living beings, stops contributing to climate change, and heals and preserves our precious planet.

  5. We accept this food so that we may nurture our brotherhood and sisterhood, build our community, and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.”

― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Eat


In this way, the pandemic has nourished my soul and I hope this newfound relationship with food is not lost in a rush back toward “the way things were.” As someone who has always had a love-hate relationship with nourishment, I hope I hope this stays.


Takeaway Two

Pets help us practice humanity. Close to the start of lock down, Posey found me. It was pretty much love at first sight in both directions. She’d had a long, rough journey. I was feeling sorry for myself for being A) alone B) without my first dog, Lucy and C) seemingly unable to manage a healthy relationship given a long list of insecurities and neurosis.


But, Posie set me straight.


“Get over yourself,” she told me that first day in no uncertain terms. “That’s life.”


Then, she added: “Now, feed me.”


After that: “Walk me.”

Through these three commands, repeated daily, I have been reminded that I can, indeed, love unconditionally —- and be loved unconditionally. And that I am perfect as I am.


Of course, I knew this love was available. I felt it the moment I met my children 25 and 22 years ago. When they curled their little bodies into mine expecting nothing of me but food, love and a diaper change, my heart opened as wide as a human heart can. Most parents, I realize, grow out of the desire to feel that sort of primal, sleep as a pack, kind of love.


I’m not one of them. Fourteen months and one pandemic later, I can’t imagine living without Posie nestled at my side at night or without her walking miles with me by day. I’m pretty sure I will always have a dog.


Takeaway Three


Free Little Libraries made isolation and closed bookstores and libraries bearable. I’ve read more books this year than I’ve ever read in that span of time. Almost all of them came to me via a Free Little Library.


Not only have I enjoyed some great stories, I’ve gained a feeling of connection with my neighbors in this simple act of sharing. I will continue to read and share this way as long as there are libraries to be found.


Takeaway Four

Speaking of neighbors, perhaps the most important takeaway from my COVID year is this: A good neighbor makes all the difference.

My friend Mary, who lives over the mountains in the Methow Valley, may not agree with her neighbors on all levels (she’s a beautiful blossom of blue in a largely red field over there) but, boy, do they take care of each other. No matter what. They share resources, help each other labor and watch out for each other during fire season. I might never have known that kind of care were it not for those deadly coronas racing around the planet.


That’s because here in my tiny apartment building in Seattle, Posie and I consider ourselves the luckiest girls in the world that we too have had such a neighbor. There are few things I appreciate more than random Sunday morning chats over coffee, donuts and the New York Times with my next door neighbor. Or cocktails and discussions with my longer distance neighbor Susan, just a few blocks away.


As I sit here, I realize that the last thing I hope to carry with me is you. Through these months it has helped me in ways I cannot articulate to share this journey with you. To click on the link to post and realize that 12 or 20 or 83 other people chose to walk with me. If blissful is too small a word for shared meals during a pandemic, then grateful gets nowhere close to how I feel about my readers.


The best I can do is say thank you.





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