The other night, as Trish and I were watching the evening news, our State’s Governor was shown imploring people to stay home as much as possible to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.  I know that staying home is a challenge for a lot of people, especially if you have young kids who should be in school or work at a job that is not amenable to working from home.  However, at this pronouncement, Trish and I looked at each other and suppressed (sort of) wry smiles.  Telling two introverts to stay home is not exactly a hardship.  Herewith, a little lighter side of the impact of the coronavirus.  We could all use a bit of a laugh right now.

On Sharing the Same Space  Our house is not huge but it’s big enough.  Big enough for us to be in totally different parts of the house and not see each other all day.  Except we don’t do that.  For some reason, the four of us (me, Trish, the two cats) always seem to end up in the same 10 square feet and we’re mostly ok with that.  It’s like the Anti-Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Take this morning, for instance.  Since we all ended up in the upstairs bathroom brushing our teeth together (the cats weren’t brushing; just assisting), we all decided to go into the basement and get in a workout.  The Beloved YMCA is closed, so we had to figure out our own thing.  Trish was on her recumbent bike.  I was on the treadmill.  Beau was on the yoga mat.  Bridget was losing her favorite Blue Ball behind some boxes.  Then Trish was lifting some weights, I was doing abs on the yoga mat, Beau was still on the yoga mat, Bridget was whining and furiously looking for her Blue Ball.  Did we need to be in that small space together?  No.  Did we get in each other’s way? Yes.  Were we ok with that?  Yes.  Did I find Bridget’s Blue Ball? Yes.  Did she lose it again in 2 minutes? Yes.

On Going to the Grocery Store  About the only outing we seem to be taking is to get fresh food.  I, fortunately, had gone to Costco and bought toilet paper because we actually needed it the week before the COVID hit the fan, so our focus is actually food.  We sometimes go together but I mostly do the grocery shopping because I enjoy it.  We have been on Weight Watchers, with gratifying success, since the start of the year so we shop mostly for produce, beans and spices.  I went yesterday for the weeks’ needs.   We were traumatized shopping in the “corona frenzy” last Friday morning, so I was a bit anxious.  The lot was not crowded, nor was the store, as we all sized each other up from a safe distance.  While there were signs of an on-going riot in the paper goods and spaghetti sauce aisles, the produce section continued to be a fine place to practice Social Distancing.  I strolled to the lettuce area, dismayed to see nearly empty racks of bagged greens.  Then I heard a voice around the corner say, “I got all the bags of spinach.”  I followed the voice to see a woman and her teenaged son reviewing their prize of about a half dozen bags of spinach.  I asked, “Did you take ALL the spinach?  Could I have just one bag?”  She didn’t want to give me one, I could tell, but she also couldn’t say no.  I thanked her and rolled off to get peppers and zucchini.  I didn’t even want spinach.  It was just the principle.  I saw her later when I was looking for ricotta and she was grabbing the last package of sliced cheddar.  I looked at her.  She asked if I wanted the bag of cheese.  I said no, but thank you.  Maybe I should have taken it.

On Going Stir Crazy  While I have established that we are both (all four of us?) Introverts Who are Happy to Stay Home, when you are somewhat REQUIRED to stay home it’s a bit different.  The one regular activity that we miss like crazy is our almost daily treks to the local YMCA.  It’s not just the exercise, although Trish misses her water aerobics as much as I miss my spin classes.  It’s the community of friends we miss, as well as the change of scenery.  After a morning at the Y, spending the afternoon reading and writing was a luscious indulgence.  Burn a little incense, make a cup of tea and I was in heaven.  Now, after an hour of reading (if that), I get nudgy.  To deal, we are taking walks around the neighborhood (with appropriate Social Distancing when we come across other people).  We had a neighborhood conversation yesterday with no one leaving the end of their driveways, and just yelling a bit to check in with each other.  Stuff is getting organized, although it still requires a little push for me to act.  But there is ONE thing that gets us excited every day.  The sound of the mail truck is like hearing the intoxicating melody of an ice cream truck.  “The MAIL!” one of us will exclaim, and we wait at the window until the truck is a few doors past ours to not look too anxious.  I create a distraction by “accidentally” kicking one of the cat bowls so Trish will clean it up (she’s obsessive about that) and I run outside.  It’s not like anything good ever comes in the mail anymore; nor are we forbidden to go outside and breath fresh air.  It’s just….good lord, I don’t even know WHAT it is!  But Sunday’s are hell.

On Getting on each Other’s Nerves  Lest you think our lives as near shut ins are all rainbows and unicorns, there are times when I have to go north and she needs to go south.  Little things start to rub.  I, for instance, eat too quickly and then get the hiccups.  I also talk back to the TV, particularly Pharma commercials and (increasingly) press conferences.  Trish has still not grasped the concept of recycling and I’m constantly fishing things out of the garbage to rinse and put in the bin.  Additionally, the logic this woman uses (or doesn’t) when it comes to loading a dishwasher is beyond me.  Who puts a small bowl in the middle of the empty bottom rack?  I also find it annoying that she so quickly came up with a list of things I do that annoy her.  Seriously, though, we do get on each other’s nerves at times which is not unexpected in a situation with the constant underlying stress of uncertainty.  In fact, I recently read that as the quarantine restrictions are being lifted in China that divorce filings are sky rocketing!  Yes, this is a time when we must all give each other a bit of grace!

What an amazing time this is for us all!  I cannot think of another instance when the entire world was dealing with the same crisis all at the same time.  This is different from being aware of a crisis.  The world responds when there is a hurricane somewhere, or we send all kinds of thoughts and prayers when there is some tragedy.  But those crises are all localized, even if the awareness is global.  This time, though, the crisis itself is global and we are connected enough to see it all unfold in real time.  We are seeing more and more instances of how this crisis is bringing out our collective humanity, which is heartening.  I, for one, have been vociferously thanking everyone working at the grocery stores when I go to shop.  Facebook is filled with things like free concerts from musicians, virtual art shows, famous actors reading books to kids, and all kinds of nice stuff—instead of all that nasty crap that had filled my News Feed so much that I was spending virtually no time on the app.  Finally, Facebook is doing again what it says it was built for—bringing people together.  My Mom’s Rabbi said in his video sermon this week that maybe this virus can be seen as the Universe sending us all a “timeout”.  Let’s use it for that.  We don’t need all the chaos and messed up priorities.  We need the humanity.  Please remember that when the shelter-in-place orders are lifted.  Trish and I put in our wedding vows that we would make sure we gave each other a good belly laugh every day.  It’s more important now than ever.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships lately.  What spurred me to write this essay is a particular type of relationship.  You know those people.  You smile when you think about them.  You can go months or years without seeing or talking, yet as soon as you are together again you pick up right where you left off; people you love unconditionally, yet you will not let them get away with any bullshit.

But first, a little of my general musing about relationships.  I’m talking all kinds of relationships:  family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances.  How people interact with each other has always fascinated me—remember, I’m an amateur social scientist.  In the workplace, it was all about influence: how can I convince someone to do what I would like them to do, be that a customer buying what my company is selling or another employee “buying” what I am trying to “sell” them about a project or other initiative.  In my personal life, it has often been around the question of how “out” do I really need to be: does the cashier at the grocery store really need to know that Trish is my wife?  Do I care that she or he may assume something totally different about who I am?  With family and friends, I am often thinking about communication.  I’ve written before about my Theory of the Half Life of Effective Communication and On Resolving Conflict.

One of the companies that I worked for was a highly distributed, global organization, with 30,000+ employees around the globe but rarely more than 200 in the same location (most had staffs of less than 50). The development of effective relationships and communication norms was critical for these micro universes.  I wrote a “white paper” about this topic for a corporate Executive Leadership Program.  It went over like a lead balloon, but I still like the premise.  I asked people to think about relationships (and this holds for the work environment as well as your personal life) as a series of concentric circles—hence the visual that I posted with this essay. 

In your personal life, that innermost circle is a very few people.  Your spouse, children, maybe siblings, maybe parents and a few cousins.  If you are lucky like me, your BFF is in that circle. These are the people that are just IN your life daily and always at the front of your mind.  You know what they are doing and they know what you are doing—almost everything.

In that second circle, you have your posse.  The friends (and family members) that you generally interact with regularly.  Successive circles outward include acquaintances that you run into every now and then.  You usually remember their names and faces.  Farther out are those transactional relationships—cashiers, service people, the person you sit next to on a transnational flight.  How you communicate with people in those circle differs, as does the work you must put into developing communication norms.

What I want to talk about, though, is a special category in that second circle: those people who aren’t necessarily in your everyday life, but with whom you have a deep bond.  This is a bond that time and life changes don’t affect; a bond that may form under a particular circumstance but that grows past that initial basis.  That’s the group of friends I just spent 4 days with in Miami Beach.

We are a circle of seven women who went through school together at Goucher College, Class of 1984.  The group is not all equal in “closeness”.  Some subgroupings have stayed deeply involved in each other’s lives continuously since graduation.  Some are very close with one or two people yet less close with others.  The closeness has ebbed and flowed over the years.  And some, like me, dropped out of sight for a good part of the 35 years since graduation while I was trying to figure out my own life.  That took about all the energy I had and, since I really hate talking on the phone, I fell out of touch with them.  (Social media, the perfect work around for phone-phobes like me, is a comparatively recent development.)  However, we ALL always came back for the 5 year interval reunions and we slid right back into the easy rapport which was always there.  At our 35 year reunion last year, we decided to make our own “off” year reunion—hello, South Beach in February! 

The hotel staff were increasingly amused as an ever-larger “Greeting Committee” would wander down to the lobby as each person arrived.  Rooming arrangements were negotiated prior through some sort of organic process.  I, one of the most introverted in the group, roomed with the most extroverted in the group.  It worked because we have a strong basis of mutual love and respect.  And that underpinned being able to say whatever we needed to say to each other.  I could say, “Stop talking.  I want to go to sleep.”  And she could say, “No, you’re not going to sleep yet.”  (I can hear the gasps of those who know me after reading that line!)

That balance extended to the wider group.  Imagine trying to coordinate four days of activities, meals, whatever with six of your friends.  What made it work was the comfort level of knowing that no one was going to dominate, that no one was going to be voiceless, that if anyone tried to push something that the consensus was uncomfortable with that they would be called on it (mostly).  These are the kind of people who won’t hesitate to tell you there is spinach in your teeth or a booger hanging out of your nose.  We split each check evenly seven ways.  If I got an expensive entree one meal, they knew it would balance out another time.  If some drank water and others had three drinks, we didn’t care.  We trusted each other and wanted each other to have a good time.  This sort of deep caring is rare. 

There were beach groups and pool groups; power walkers and strollers; chatter and companionable silence times.  The last night we were all together, we took over the pool bar for a rather loud game of Farkle.  It’s a dice game that involves equal parts strategy and accounting, and us “Goucher Women of Promise” quickly picked it up.  True to form, we kept helpfully adding up everyone’s score for them each roll.  It just worked and was so comfortable!  I think what I liked the most is that while we did a little reminiscing about our college years, 95% of the conversation was about our lives since then.  Our years at Goucher, struggling through classes together and learning to be adults, formed the basis of our friendship.  But it has been what we have navigated through in the decades since, and how we have shared it and grown with it that have formed the ties that bind us.  You know, I don’t even remember ever officially coming out to this group.  I don’t think I came out to anyone while we were in school.  But they all knew and that part of my life just fit into the rest of our relationship.  This is the ONLY group with which that process has happened!

We have continued the group text that started as we prepared to travel down to Miami, sharing more of our daily lives with the group.  We have penciled in a week for next year to get together again.  Shout out to Goucher, since 6 of the 7 of us have retired (or essentially so) by 57 years of age, so this is more do-able for us now.  Trish and I are talking about some travel that will include stops to see some of the group.  (This was a spouse-less trip, so Trish missed out.)  Realistically, I know life will get in the way a bit and this tight communication will fade.  But I also know that when we do get together again, hopefully next year, we’ll pick up right where we left off, Farkle and all.  I treasure these friendships and these women.  I hope you all are lucky enough to have friends like this in your lives.