20 Reasons to Love 2020

I don’t think anyone will struggle to find reasons to put this year behind us. But this isn’t that list. This is the list of silver linings and small moments. And seeing the glass half-full. Yes, 2020 has served up unimaginable loss and pain, but when you look closely at these past months, you may discover some magic, too. In the words of Leonard Cohen, There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. And in the words of Eeyore, It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine.

Here are the things about 2020 that I can honestly say I am grateful for:

1. Birds – Remember the strange and beautiful stillness of the spring, when the streets were empty and the skies were quiet? With our noisy urban soundtrack paused—even at rush hour—we could open our ears to the songs of birds that filled the trees and nested in traffic lights.
2. Comfort Cooking – I may still be carrying those few extra pounds, but they’re worth it for the fig pizza, cinnamon rolls from scratch, and, most memorably, the homemade pasta that my daughter mastered this summer and taught me to make, the two of us draping scarves of dough over the butcher block island, cutting wide fettuccini noodles that we topped with pesto made from garden basil.
3. Neighbors Helping Neighbors – In early March, I found a handwritten note stuffed in my mailbox. A neighbor I’d never met was starting a WhatsApp chat group for our part of town. We grew by the dozens and were soon exchanging seedlings, making each other face masks, and borrowing gardening tools. We checked in before going on grocery runs. One night there was a dance party—everyone boogeying from their own front porch.
4. Elastic Waist Bands at Work – Including pajama bottoms, even on Zoom calls. Make that Casual Monday – Friday.
5. Takeout Thursday – When our two college students returned home in March, there were a few adjustment pains (ie. pushy mom thinks she can prescribe daily exercise for adult children trapped at home.) With four people in one house and no place to go, there was also fraught grocery shopping, surface wiping, and endless meal prep. But then we initiated Takeout Thursday when we’d order from a local restaurant and eat together around the coffee table in the living room. One night we sat there with our food from Town Tavern and just started laughing. So much joy to be found in fried chicken that we didn’t have to cook ourselves.
6. Snail-Mail over Email – It’s a cinch to make someone’s day with a quick note and a Forever stamp. Sometimes I cut up cardboard food boxes and make postcards with pictures of Cheerio bowls or Annie’s Mac ‘n’ Cheese. I have a couple of pandemic pen pals, including Anita who shares my passion for books and postcards; and my friend’s mom, Lillian, who writes me long, newsy letters from Oregon. In the last one, she included fifteen dollars for me “to buy a poinsettia and give her a thought.”
7. Wandering Away – In the spring months, I’d walk dutifully around the nearby reservoir, then check my step count, trying to add a measure of justification to a day that often felt stressful, but never satisfying. But then I started leaving my phone behind as I found new places to explore. The steps didn’t matter, just the experience of getting offline and into the world.
8. Better Commute – Do I like teaching online? Not really. Do I love my non-commute? Yep! I end my three-hour Zoom class at 9:20 on Monday nights, and instead of driving 35 minutes home from Lowell, I wander down the hall into the family room. My husband queues up The Great British Baking Show while I settle in with a bowl of ice cream. Extra bonus: I don’t have to change my clothes because I’m already wearing pajama bottoms.
9. Making Stuff – Inspiration blooms in the fertile ground of silence, and creating in isolation is how writers and artists have always lived. With nowhere to go this summer, I dove into my next writing project that I’m now revising. Even artists that need the stage—and each other—have found ways to safely make art during COVID. I’m embarrassed by how many times my daughter and I have watched this Broadway sequence…5 6 7 8…or stared awestruck at this one, Dancing through Harlem.
10. Unburdened Birthday – Although I spent much of my October 29^th birthday alone at home—an innie instead of an outie, as my friend Barbara said—it was glorious to have no expectations for a day that sometimes stresses me out. It poured rain that afternoon, so I allowed myself the luxury of doing whatever I wanted. No self-judgement. No pressure to pick activities or see people. I spent five hours listening to music as I baked an enormous salted caramel cake, then delivered pieces to friends that night.
11. Outside Visits – My friend Lynette texts, Plug in the electric blanket, I’m coming over, and we sit on my back porch and catch up. As our need to connect increases, we’re finding new ways to stay warm outside, six feet apart.
12. Pandemic Dreams – When stay-at-home orders were put in place, there was a global dream surge. According to National Geographic, without access to our usual forms of inspiration, our dreams became strange and wild, and—I would argue—wonderful.
13. Frolf – 1.5 years into empty nester-hood, my husband and I finally—thank you, pandemic—have a thing. Mark started playing Frisbee golf (aka disc golf or frolf) with his Ultimate Frisbee friends as a way to stay active, social, and distanced. Now I’m hooked, too. On weekend mornings, Mark and I head to our favorite wooded course and throw plastic discs into baskets, trying to make birdies.
14. This Life – Our hearts have broken open over the preciousness of life. We have mourned with friends who have lost loved ones. Or we have lost our own. We are different people for realizing what can be cruelly taken away at any moment, and our brief time in this world feels even more sacred. As I write this, my father-in-law is going on week five in the Yale New Haven Hospital ICU with COVID. There are still so many unknowns.
15. Thanksgiving 2020 – Simplest ever. We missed our friends and extended family, but that quiet day with the kids was beautiful.
16. Reading Time – When the world fell apart, I had much more time for reading. If you’re not sure what to read, check out Zibby Owens’ podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books or start a virtual bookclub with this guide from Brown Paper Press. And switch from Amazon to Bookshop.org. Indie bookstores—not Jeff Bezos—are in need right now.
17. The First Two Months – 2020 wasn’t always this way. In February my husband and I visited our daughter at Syracuse, stopping to hear Wanda Houston perform love songs at The Gateways Inn on Valentine’s Day. I made it to Germany to visit my sister and give a reading from Trove at The Munich Readery. Then I flew home the first week of March, just as the pandemic was getting air play. (Phew.)
18. Games to Play – We’re a Setback (aka Pitch) family. What can I say? We like taking tricks. But my son just introduced us to a game he plays at college called Games, or Kemps. It involves secret partner communication, but is apparently not as fun when you’re sober. If you don’t yet have your family game, my enterprising friend DeAnn just created this one called Quarantine. It’s already an Etsy bestseller.
19. The Little Things – There were so many small moments of grace: My musical friends, Marjorie and Jim, serenading me in my yard on a windy April afternoon. My neighbor Patricia who delivered homemade sopapillas for our quiet Thanksgiving. A socially distanced summer dinner with Theresa on my back deck after her husband died. Eight friends gathering in the park next door for the Chinese Moon Festival. As I looked up at the full moon rising over the willow on that early October night, I felt so small, and so grateful.
20. Biden. Harris 2020  – Amen.