A pandemic year: I’ve alternated from being horrified, angry and fearful, contemplative and creative, lonely and sad. As we've been alone and quiet for days on end, introspection has also lead to appreciation. I’m grateful for my marriage and partner in life (this is our 50th year) and we are still learning about each other, finding ways to improve our relationship.
Not being able to visit family and friends, children and grandchildren, I turned to my garden. I’ve always enjoyed growing flowers. It was a source of pride to put fresh arrangements in the studio for our guests. Now with no guests, I decided to convert flower beds to vegetable gardens. It’s been a pioneer year, with planting in soil that has not been improved in decades, seeds planted in pots of all shapes and sizes, hand crafted plant stakes from twigs to pipes and almost anything around to prop them up; it was quite fun. We harvested multiple kinds of squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets and onions. I tried pickling, roasting and freezing. Some were successful, some not. More importantly, I felt like I was doing something positive that felt creative and gave me a focus. Every morning, I grabbed my coffee cup and strolled the garden on a little tour to check on my ‘babies’. It’s silly, I know, but it gave me joy.
Underlying all activity was the constant concern about our future, as a couple, a family, an organization and a world. As months passed, I worried about other hosts and how they were faring. We learned about short and long term effects of grief, isolation and loneliness. I had canceled our host meetup in March. In April, with cancellations and closings coming in from everywhere, I was talking to our board about pausing our Host2Host organization completely.. But we soon realized that this is a time when our community is needed the most. So we pivoted our monthly meetups to Zoom and we have not missed one since. In fact, we are celebrating over 80 host meetups since we began! To further support our hosts, we created a weekly virtual Host Coffee. We have no agenda for these meetings, and we talk about whatever is on our minds. Sometimes our conversations are host-related and often we simply share (sometimes tearfully) feelings about our life situations. The conversations have been remarkably nurturing, some folks have told us this is their main form of connection to the outside world. We are committed to continue the host coffees as long as people come, and are now opening them up to nonmembers. I invite you to participate if you are interested.
During the pandemic, my concept of my identity has been challenged. I’m learning more about who I am and who I am not. Gardening, my husband and my organization have helped to give me direction. Now, with a vaccine in sight, I feel it’s okay to get hopeful again. Planning to travel brings a lightness of spirit. I’m thinking about how I can refresh our listings, realign our niche marketing, update listing descriptions and more in preparation for future guests. It’s wonderful to be alive and feel excitement about travel and future new experiences in a world where we know we can safely be together again! We held our host ‘Bon Voyage to 2020’ party virtually this week and it was great fun to laugh and be happy. Although the we are still not meeting physically, the joy we expressed together holds us in anticipation of much better times. I just got word that the vaccine will arrive in our part of the world next week!
Thank you for this opportunity to connect and share with all of you. I have enjoyed reading your posts, and I hope that you too are beginning to feel revived and hopeful. Here are a couple of pictures from my garden.
Best wishes for safe and happy Holidays to you all.
