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2020 Round Up-a-Rama

Last year, I ended this yearly recap with “A new decade lies before us, Internet. Fresh and unwrinkled, with no mistakes in it yet. I hope it brings all of us health and happiness and grace.”

Oh, Past Me. So innocent. So unknowing. 

Despite this year being… you know. Awful in so many, many, many ways, I do want to recap it. First, it’s An Established Tradition on this blog. (If you’re so inclined, you can read past versions of my responses: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009. This yearly recap originated with Linda of All & Sundry.)

Second, this is a year for the history books, and, well, it feels worth recording.

Also, please forgive the formatting. WordPress and I are NOT getting along today.

As usual, I reserve the right to delete ignore or scoff at any of the questions below. Please let me know if YOU do a year-end recap – I love to read them.

  • What did you do in 2020 that you’d never done before?
    • Lived through (the first nine months of) a global pandemic. 
    • Supervised my child during remote learning. 
    • Stayed at home with my daughter all summer.
    • Tried Keto.
    • Entertained friends and family solely outside. 
    • Dyed my own hair. 
    • Downloaded and used Zoom, many, many times. 
    • Celebrated every important-to-us holiday and birthday without extended family.
  • Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Once again, I had a bunch of loose aspirations for the year, many of which are quite blackly hilarious in light of the pandemic. At least I was able to achieve the main one – “I am not going to put a huge amount of pressure on accomplishing anything outside of keeping myself and my child alive. Even my husband is ON HIS OWN, for keeping-alive purposes.” Good enough, self.

  • Where did you travel this year? (This is my own recasting of a question I could never answer which was How many countries did you visit this year?)

This year, I visited Florida, Montana, and Michigan and that’s it because the pandemic put a kibosh on all my travel plans. We went to Florida pre-pandemic. We went to Montana when the pandemic was just starting to creep across the country. And we went to Michigan in October, just the three of us, and rented a little house in the middle of nowhere and did outdoor activities and brought takeout back to our rental. 

  • What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?

A return to some sort of pre-pandemic normalcy, for myself and my country, and across the globe. A strong third draft of my manuscript. More time alone with my husband. Dinner in a restaurant. The ability to travel without worrying about infection/infecting.

  • What dates from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
    • March 17, which was the last day of in-person first grade for Carla and the day when Shit Got Real.
    • September 14, which was Carla’s first day of second grade and her return to in-person school. It was a day of WILDLY CONFLICTING EMOTIONS but it turned out to be the best possible decision we could have made, for our particular child, with our particular circumstance. 
    • My husband’s birthday in October, during which he turned 40. He continues to grow ever hotter with the years, which is truly unfair but also really enjoyable for me.

  • What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Surviving.

  • What was your biggest failure?

My FEELING of failure is related to how poorly I’ve taken care of myself this year. It’s not a REAL failure, because I succeeded in Making It to the end of 2020. But I have self-soothed against pandemic anxiety by eating and drinking too much, resulting in me feeling that I have been a) overdramatic and b) using the pandemic as an excuse to lose control. But I am also trying to be kind to myself, and there is time (I hope) to recalibrate. 

I am also frustrated that this novel still isn’t done. So frustrated. But again: trying to be kind, take it one day at a time, and remind myself that the pace doesn’t matter as much as the product.

  • Did you suffer illness or injury?

No, thank goodness.

  • What was the best thing you bought?

The outdoor heater for our back porch. It enabled us to socialize with a couple of families well into October. Oh! And Carla’s bike was a GREAT purchase. She got so much exhilaration and joy and exercise from that bike!

  • Whose behavior merited celebration?
  • Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
  • Where did most of your money go?
  • What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I was really looking forward to going skiing with my parents and Carla for the first time. The pandemic nipped that right in the bud. 

  • What song(s) will always remind you of 2020?

There has been – thank goodness – a LOT of music in 2020. A bunch of it comes from Just Dance 2020, and will be forever stuck in my head thanks to Carla’s insistence that we repeat one song over and over until we drop from exhaustion. Despite my early worries – well, I guess it’s still too soon to tell, but I don’t THINK these songs will fill me with the dread of this year. Instead, they remind me of the good times. Dancing with my daughter. Staying up too late, just the three of us, watching music videos on TV. Driving together somewhere outdoors and isolated from people, listening to many of these songs every time. I hope that’s what sticks with me. 

  • Compared to this time last year, are you:
    • a) happier or sadder? 
    • b) thinner or fatter? 
    • c) richer or poorer? 

  • What do you wish you’d done more of?

Writing (evergreen item). Going on dates with my husband (HAHAHAHAHAHA). Exercising. Reading.

  • What do you wish you’d done less of?

Feeling sad. Eating my feelings. Worrying. Doomscrolling. 

  • How did you spend Christmas?

Just the three of us, enjoying each other’s company, getting together via Zoom and FaceTime with our extended families. It seems wildly unfair to say that I really enjoyed our Christmas alone together. But I did. While I definitely look forward to having my parents here next year, it was so, so nice to be able to have a nearly stress-free Christmas, to stay in my pajamas for nearly 48 hours straight, and to be able to retire to our separate corners (Carla with LEGOs, my husband with a puzzle, me with a book) and just co-exist in a very amiable, very loving, and very quiet space for an entire weekend. I kind of loved it. That does NOT mean I want/need it to be this way every year. I was mainly glad that I wasn’t overwhelmed by grief at being apart. 

  • Did you fall in love in 2020?

I had crossed out this question in previous years because it is stupid. BUT I am uncrossing it on (??? what is the opposite of crossing out?) this year because I feel like I fell more in love with Carla this year. Her flexibility and adaptability and determination and general cheerfulness throughout the pandemic have been a sight to behold. But beyond that, we spent more time together this year than we have since those first few months after her birth. And let’s be honest, back then, we were strangers. Not to mention that the most interesting things she did in those early days included rolling over and sleeping multiple consecutive hours in a night. Now that she is seven, she is SO INTERESTING and FUN and we have real conversations and do things together that are enjoyable for both of us. In past years, I was super anxious for her to go to camp during the summer because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to occupy her by myself. This summer, camp was not a possibility for her, so we DID spend all summer together. And it was FINE. Some days, it was even GREAT! 

Most of all, I’ve gotten to know her better, and, hopefully, to understand her better. I see what she goes through in a school-esque setting. I have a better grasp of her work process, of her strengths and challenges when it comes to learning and friendships. I have a new appreciation for how much effort she puts into her schoolwork, how kind and supportive she is to her friends, how unexpectedly shy she can be in front of her peers, how she lights up when she has one-on-one time with her teachers and classmates. 

Our time together is now more precious than it ever was, simply because I understand better than ever how wonderful she is, and how quickly she is growing up. I treasure the rare moments when she wants to snuggle up and read with me, the times when we can move our bodies outdoors together, the delight we share when I introduce her to something I love (Full House, Ellen Tebbits, Friends). I have always loved her with my whole heart. But I fell so much more deeply in love with her this year. 

  • What was your favorite (new) TV program?

THANK GOODNESS FOR TV. Somehow I watched a lot less TV during a global pandemic than I thought I would? Not that I ever thought about it before; I am just kind of surprised that I haven’t been vegged out in front of the TV for nine months. (It was still a lot of TV.) (I love TV.)

  • *
    • Ted Lasso was so, so, so wonderful. Best sleeper hit of the year. (Sleeper hit for me because the previews made it out to be a show about soccer, which is a topic I have ZERO interest in.) (IT WAS SO GOOD.) 
    • The Babysitters Club remake was AMAZING in every way and I was so delighted to watch it with Carla, and plan to watch it with her again in the future because it will resonate with her in new ways as she gets older. 
    • I loved The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
    • Never Have I Ever was super fun. 
    • I watched Veronica Mars for the first time and loved it. 
    • I started watching The Mindy Project for the first time and found it to be very comforting in its romantic absurdity (although I have had more than enough of the weight hate). 
    • The Crown continues to be surprisingly riveting. 
    • Making It and LEGO Masters and Magic for Humans are new to me and all wonderful, feel-good pandemic viewing. 
    • Great British Baking Show and Penn & Teller Fool Us and Songland continue to be excellent, soothing fare. 
  • Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
  • What was the best book you read?

This year, despite going through several long periods where I just COULDN’T get through a novel, I read more than 45 books which is a record for me. And so many of them were so good!!!!! 

  • *
    • The Searcher by Tana French is probably my top book of the year. She’s just such a masterful writer – her prose is gorgeous and the characters are so well-drawn. I didn’t find the plot to be among her best – it’s pretty simple and easy to parse – but there were some surprising (and creepy) elements that I liked, and I just enjoyed it so much. 
    • I read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and absolutely fell in love with Thomas Cromwell, whose life and motivations are so richly imagined by Hilary Mantel. I have the third installment of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, on my nightstand, but didn’t manage to pick it up in 2020.
    • The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a book I still think about, even though I read it back in August. I bought it for several of the bookish people I know for Christmas. The way Bennett handles questions of identity and how people present themselves to the world was so skilled and thoughtful. 
    • I typically don’t read romance novels, but The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan was spectacular – fun and touching and funny and well-paced and just an excellent read. (I STILL haven’t read the sequel, The Heir Affair, because of really dumb reasons, like that I read the original on Kindle, so I want to read the sequel on Kindle, but every time it is available from the library I am in the middle of something else. I should really just buy both of them in print and move on with my life.)
    • Speaking of genres I don’t often read, I just this week finished Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia which is what I would categorize as a horror novel. I’ve heard it compared to Rebecca, which I loved when I read it many years ago (and now want to read again). But Moreno-Garcia’s book is ENTIRELY its own. It was fascinating and surprising and like nothing I’ve ever read before. No wonder it’s been on so many Must Read and Best Of lists all year long. 

You know my favorite genre is mystery/thriller, and I read some GREAT ones this year. 

  • *
    • I literally just read The Holdout by Graham Moore yesterday – I started it at lunchtime and finished it right around when my husband got home at about sixish, so perhaps that tells you that it was EXCELLENT and UNPUTDOWNABLE. Well written, well-paced, great use of multiple perspectives and timelines. There were some surprises in the plot and it was just… so, so good. This was a book I hadn’t heard of – my husband bought it for me for Christmas and this just solidifies the fact that he is a GREAT picker-outer of books. Now I think I need to go back and read more of Moore’s work.
    • Long Bright River by Liz Moore was superb, with a surprising plot, great characters, and a careful, thoughtful handling of the subject of addiction. This one book made her a person whose next book I would by unquestioningly.
    • Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden has to be on my list because I think about it long after the fact. The mystery itself wasn’t perhaps my favorite, but I absolutely loved the descriptions of life on the reservation and the protagonist’s experiences with legal obstacles and his reluctant foray into traditional tribal approaches to problem-solving. I look forward to more books by Weiden. 
    • I also really, really enjoyed The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh – it was so fast-paced and built on such an interesting premise. Like watching a really good action movie, but in book form.
  • What did you want and get?

For my family and friends to be safe and healthy this year. So far, so good. We are very, very lucky.

A VACCINE. My goodness,

Also, a new president. 

  • What did you want and not get?

A refrigerator that doesn’t leak mysteriously and incessantly. New windows. Unity around a workable, scientifically-backed virus containment strategy.

  • What was your favorite film of this year?

Um. I think we probably watched more movies this year than ever before, but damned if I can remember any of them. A lot of them were oldies from when my husband and I were youths – you know, Back to the Futures I and II, The Goonies, Jumanji, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Jurassic Park. Most of them held up pretty well. 

  • What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
  • What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

IF THERE HAD BEEN NO GLOBAL PANDEMIC.

  • How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?

2020 Fashion was all about comfort. Soft bras, soft pants, soft shorts, no makeup, no shoes. Let’s exchange our pajamas for some Daytime Leggings and then switch back in a few hours. That kind of thing. I did buy some leopard print shoes and some jean shorts (gasp!) though. I am never going to feel comfortable wearing a bra again, that’s for sure.

  • What kept you sane?

My husband. Exercise. My terrible, ubiquitous, addictive phone. Recipe and exercise blogs (most of which I just save for later rather than putting to immediate use). Good TV. Carbs. Tequila. The Office Ladies podcast. Reading your blog posts. Long walks, when I was able to take them. My backyard, when the weather was bearable. Writing here.

  • Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Ted Lasso, who is, admittedly a fictional character rather than a celebrity. Nonetheless, I LOVE HIM. 

I also fell in love with Jenna Fisher, of The Office fame, through the Office Ladies podcast she hosts with Angela Kinsey. She’s a beautiful TV and movie star, yet she portrays herself as kind of this nerdy, super-organized, socially-awkward person… and she just seems like someone I would want to be friends with. I love hearing about her celebrity friends and experiences — her life is SO unlike my own. But she is also such a REAL person, and she gets so REAL on her podcast, talking about REAL things, and she seems so kind and caring. I love how supportive and thoughtful she seems to be — she is always describing her cast- and crewmates from The Office in such a positive and genuine way. But she gets deeper, too. In one episode, she told a story about eating an entire bag of snack mix in one sitting, and saying that sometimes it is okay to not be okay. That has stayed with me. For the most part this year, I have not been okay with not being okay. I feel melodramatic and like I should be grateful for what I have and like I should buck up and have a stiff upper lip and get some perspective. But it has been A TOUGH YEAR. It SHOULD be okay to not be okay. It IS okay. I keep repeating that to myself like a mantra. Not to wallow, but to reduce the guilt and the self-recrimination. Anyway, Jenna Fisher for life, y’all. 

  • What political issue stirred you the most?
  • Who did you miss?

My friend who died. My housecleaner (sob!). My parents, although we got to see them right before the pandemic tipped over into This Is Really A Big Deal, and they also drove out to visit us this past fall. I know this is a TON more time than other people got to have with their families. Still. It wasn’t enough time, and they weren’t here for Thanksgiving which was a bummer. I am a mega introvert, so I didn’t really miss anyone else. I mean, it would have been nice to see some of the other moms more often. But I got to see my two closest local friends a few times, which was honestly kind of the perfect amount of socializing for me.  

  • Who was the best new person you met?

Shocking to absolutely no one, the number of people I know/interact with dropped significantly this year. But you know what? I DID meet someone new this year! She and her daughter moved here, and she enrolled her daughter in Carla’s school, and we actually met in person for a “playdate” in a parking lot. (Parking lot lines are really helpful in keeping children socially distance, FYI. There’s your 2020 Hot Tip of the Year. Get them to an empty parking lot, set them up in individual spaces with one space in between them, and allow them to shout at each other in lieu of actually playing together.) Anyway, we have gotten the kids together via Zoom several times since, and we text while they play and both mom and child are delightful. I am very glad to have met them, and, honestly, the circumstances are very soothing to my introverted, socially awkward soul.

  • Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.

Somehow, my answer from 2019 is pretty apt for this year as well: I don’t know. That things could always be worse? Ugh. That’s a terrible life lesson, true as it may be. That sometimes things seem pretty grim and you just have to keep going? I am still processing the past few months and I don’t think I’ve fully wrapped my head around what’s been going on… or how to apply what I’ve learned (what I’m learning?) to the future. So that grit-your-teeth kind of thing is all I have right now.

Maybe, on a slightly more positive note, that despite everything, there is SO MUCH to be grateful for. Even when the big things are uncertain and scary and sad, there are plenty of tiny, wonderful joys to be counted and held up for inspection and treasured. I have made a point to consider all the blessings in my life this year – sometimes just FORCING myself to be grateful dammit – and I feel more aware of them, and of how full my life is even when it seems otherwise. I hope among all the wreckage of this year that you, too, have found some kernel of gratitude. Not because you SHOULD, but because it helps to have even a small glimmer of light to walk toward when everything seems so unbearably dark.  

  • Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“I’m so thankful. Scratch that baby I’m grateful.” – Katy Perry, “Smile” 

Happy New Year, Internet. May 2021 bring us all happiness, health, and togetherness.

by

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

I just finished a book with which I fell so completely in love, I want to FORCE everyone to read it immediately.

Of course, in my intense desire to expose everyone to this perfectly wonderful book, I am fearful that maybe you won’t, in fact, like it. Which wouldn’t make me like you less, I promise; I know books of all things are highly subjective, and you might find the style irritating or disjointed or you might find the subject matter maudlin or disturbing.

But I still feel this strong, nay, irresistible urge to COMPEL you to read it, and then get all your friends and family members to read it as well.

Am I putting too much pressure on it? I’m putting too much pressure on it.

Eh, you may like it, you may not. Whatever.

Let me see if I can pinpoint, for myself, why I liked it so immensely. And maybe that will help you determine whether you think you might like it.

The book in question is “The Friend” by Sigrid Nunez.

the friend

Image from amazon.com

And, by the way, Sigrid Nunez is nearly 70 years old, which I find appealing as well. (You don’t necessarily hear a lot of buzz about older authors.) (Her protagonist in this book is also older; I envisioned the protagonist as a stand-in for Sigrid, although who knows.) She didn’t publish her first book until she was 44! She is a critically acclaimed author, and I am deeply embarrassed that I haven’t read her work until now. I feel an urgent need to read ALL her books now, in quick succession.

This particular book won the National Book Award in 2018, if that makes any difference to you.

Do I need to include a trigger warning here? Probably. The book deals, in large part, with suicide. So if that is a problematic topic for you, I sadly recommend against reading the book. (I can’t remember any specific, upsetting descriptions of the death, but I suppose I could have forgotten them.)

But its larger themes are more philosophical: Grief, and its forms. Love, and its actors, and its varying forms. Growing old, and what that means, and its inevitable conclusion. Writing, and what it means to be a writer, and the changing view of writing/writers. Those are the big ones.

More specifically, there is a woman whose mentor dies, and who – unexpectedly, without warning her or asking her – leaves her his dog. Not just any dog, but a giant Great Dane. (She lives in a tiny pets-free rent-controlled apartment in New York City.)

From the get-go, I was skeptical of the book. While I don’t dislike dogs, I certainly don’t love them. I didn’t want to read a book about a dog. I didn’t want to read a sad book about someone losing her friend. I opened it with great reluctance. I was soothed to find that the protagonist prefers cats to dogs as I do.

Also, the book is (sort of) epistolary. It’s written in the second person, directed at the mentor she’s lost to suicide. That’s unusual enough that it could be distracting or annoying or tiresome.

Some things I loved about the book:

  • The style is unlike anything I’ve read before. Some reviewers refer to it as “stream of consciousness,” which I get. But I sort of think of “stream of consciousness” as a semi-derogatory way to describe someone’s prose (I don’t know why). I think of it as a Joyce-ian, Molly-Bloom-ian type of style, with long voluminous paragraphs and few sentences and winding, difficult-to-untangle threads of thought. (Maybe that’s why I think of it as derogatory; I did NOT enjoy Ulysses.) This book is NOT like that. I thought of it more as reading someone’s diary: there are discrete paragraphs, often unrelated or related only in that way that thoughts link to one another in your brain. Sometimes it feels like you are reading her notes, as she researches a particular subject: Here she is, going through her research about (for example — may not actually appear in the book) student/professor affairs; there is a paragraph about an author who had a famously disastrous affair with a student; there is a summary of the changing cultural attitude toward student/teacher relationships; there is a literary quote about the lawlessness of the heart; there is a paragraph about university regulations around fraternizing with students; there is an anecdote from her personal life about someone she knew who had an affair with a student. I can see how this might sound unappealing; there is no singular narrative that flows from beginning to end. I mean, there is, but you get all these ebbs and flows as she interjects and retreats. But I found it wholly appealing – a very fresh and interesting way to approach telling a story. And she does it so deftly that I felt as though I was riding around in her brain with her. The little intuitive leaps made sense and even when she turned away completely from something, it felt… right, and understandable. Nothing ever felt disjointed or incoherent, each thought became simply a new tiny wave breaking on the shore and then melting back into the larger narrative sea.

 

  • The prose is so clean and well-written. She has a very spare writing style, nothing extraneous, every word chosen precisely and with reason. Which is not to say that there isn’t a great deal of beauty in her words – on the contrary, her writing is lovely and evocative. I found myself rereading some sentences many times, marveling at their clarity and simplicity.

 

  • The subject matter is so heavy, yet she treats it so lightly. No, that’s not right. Maybe, she treats it with such a light hand. She seems so comfortable with the inevitability of the subjects of aging and death and grief… and she writes around the topics with such depth and breadth… that the gravitas isn’t pulling you under with each new sentence.

 

  • Related: she has a great sense of humor. You’ll be talking about aging and then suddenly you’re talking about poop. But not in a jarring way. In a charming, amusing way. (Oh clod I am not doing this justice at all. I should just stop talking.) There’s this one point where she relates a conversation with a friend. The friend wonders if she’s ever considered finding a therapist; she thinks the friend is talking about a therapist for the dog; the friend is not. It’s gentle humor, but helps keep the book light.

 

  • The book is meticulously researched. As I was reading, I was certain that any subject she raises in the book has been thoroughly and comprehensively researched. She’s read all the literature related to suicide or dogs or whatever. She’s got all the relevant quotes. She’s dug into the pertinent scientific journals. She’s read related news articles. She’s combed through Wikipedia. You know this only because she pulls out the best tidbits to share – again, kind of like you might scrawl off a particularly juicy detail about, I don’t know, a work project, in your diary – and they are fascinating. But it is clear that they are the gems she plucked out and shined up, and that there are truckloads of dirt clods that she left behind. It’s impressive and, frankly, kind of awe-inspiring.

 

  • She handles the central relationships of the book with such care. Basically, you’ve got a woman and her dead mentor. And you’ve a got a woman and her dead mentor’s dog. And, really, you’ve got a woman coming to terms with herself without her dead friend. Each of these relationships is drawn with such tremendous compassion and thoughtfulness and grace (this seems like the wrong word, but I keep coming back to it) that I was wholly drawn in, wholly won over.

 

  • Lurking in the background is that this book is about a writer, writing. Writing figures into the overarching narrative as kind of a linking force and maybe even a personal imperative. The protagonist is a writer, her mentor is a writer; their writing brought them together, kept them together. And she’s figuring out how writing fits in to her grieving process.

 

Perhaps you should know, before you read it, that I finished reading, closed the book, and wept like a child. Great body-shaking sobs that I could not control or suppress. And yet I welcomed the tears, because they were so well-earned.

Have I managed to make it sound dull and off-putting? Possibly. Hopefully I have not done more harm than good in recommending it to you.

Well, I think you’d be best off just reading the book. I loved it. I wish I could read it again for the first time. I look forward to returning to it again. And then again. I am so very glad I read it.

If you read it, let me know, will you?