Testing the Waters

Last night I got to swim again for the first time in nearly a year.

With the exception of occasional walks on the treadmill while watching Star Trek, or travel home from work on foot, any real physical activity became one of my basic losses of the pandemic. Right around my birthday in mid-March 2020, my county pool shut down. There is talk it may never reopen. In the meantime, the impact on my body of no longer swimming a few times a week hasn't been good. I feel less capable in my skin, like I've suffered a power drain.

So I asked around to see if there were any pools in our area that had found a way to allow people to swim safely, and I found two. One is north of us, a bit far, a bit expensive, but has excellent protocols. The other is south, closer, cheap, but a bit more lax. The one to the south was incredibly convenient (no reservations, evening hours), so my oldest daughter and I decided to give it a try and see if we felt safe there or not.

At first, it didn't look promising. There were swim lessons going on, and too many people indoors without masks for our comfort. I left my mask on until the last minute and got into the pool. I figured once submerged, it couldn't get much safer. I have noticed over the years that the odds of my even picking up a common cold were greatly diminished when I swim regularly, most likely because soaking for long periods in chlorine kills anything I might have picked up. Aden stood at the far end of the pool where there were fewer people and waited for most of them to leave before she took off her mask and ventured into the water.

But then after the swim lessons ended, and the parents and children cleared out, we had the entire pool to ourselves! A lone lifeguard sat off to the side in a mask and looked on while we didn't drown. After a little while, they shut off some of the overhead lights and turned on the lights in the water to make it glow, which was really beautiful.

I hadn't intended to swim a whole mile, because I didn't want to make my body too sore after such a long hiatus, but it felt so nice to move I went ahead and did it anyway. The first few laps felt good and familiar, but also like a strange adjustment. My back didn't seem to understand what was happening, then got used to it. By lap eight, my arms were feeling it, but they got used to it, too. By the thirty-sixth lap, I knew I would be sore today, but it was nice to know it would be the good kind of sore. Not the feeling-old-while-I-get-out-of-bed kind of sore. Sore like I earned something. Sore like I can feel my body working the way it's supposed to.

Aden simply enjoyed floating about and being out of the house for a change. She agreed a pool to ourselves (or even at some point with a couple of other people in the other lanes) was not a big risk. We are going to do our best to stick to a regular schedule and swim a few times a week.

One of the things I appreciated while doing my laps again was the ability to think and sort out ideas. I can do that in a way in the pool that I can't quite do anywhere else. And as I was literally testing the waters again, returning to something that used to be normal and now feels noteworthy, I started to imagine what it will be like building toward an old life that seems new again.

I have orchestra back. It's different, and now carries an undertone of anxiety not related to simply sorting out rhythms and fingerings by a certain deadline, but it's part of my routine again. It requires I keep track of the days once more. I have to plan ahead to have gas in the car, and to eat before I leave to be someplace on time. "On time" has not been a concern for many months.

I'm working on a project for the Racine Art Museum's "Peeps contest." It was canceled last year, and my kids and I couldn't find any Peeps in the store anyway. (One of many unexpected shortages due to Covid.) I received a notice in the mail inviting our family to please participate this year. The Peeps contest is back! As are actual Peeps. I'm looking forward to sharing more about that as our projects come together this week.

"Looking forward to" is a nice phrase I haven't gotten to use in a while. There have only been vague plans and unfinished chores and no structure to anything. I didn't normally think of myself as someone needing structure, but I know better now.

I don't need rules so much as rhythm. I've missed anticipation, interaction, conclusion, accountability, and a predictable level of repetition that allows you to plan. I've missed planning things.

I told Aden I really believe she'll be able to start college in the fall. Finally. She's not convinced. She's had this rug pulled out from under her twice now.

I believe this past year has been hardest on her of anyone in our home. Virtual schooling as worked out very well for Mona, and doesn't seem to bother Quinn. This year would have been an adjustment for Ian anyway having retired from the Army, so he was already going to have to sort out what role to play at home now. I have good days and bad. But Aden was supposed to be able to finish her senior year of high school and spend the summer with her friends and move on to a college adventure. I was going to send her care packages and enjoy hearing stories of life on her own when she'd visit at holidays. Instead she's been without direction or a social scene that requires she get up from the couch. Compound that with the guilt of being anything short of grateful for a home where she's safe and a family that is healthy, and it makes for a fairly dismal gap year.

But I really do think with a year of her college figuring out what works and what doesn't, people getting vaccinated, better and more rapid tests becoming available, and her own new habits for staying safe, Aden will get to go away to school. Which means thinking about things like packing, and classes, and... And all the things a 19-year old should be thinking about. I'm excited for her.

We're a long way from normal. And there are some things about the old normal that I don't think I want back. But swimming again on a regular schedule is a big step in the right direction for a change. I feel it in my muscles today. And I feel it in my heart.

Time for Music

I got to play an orchestra rehearsal last week. I get to do it again this week. The weight of what all of this means to me is something I'm still processing, because sometimes you truly don't know how important something is until it's gone.

For most of my life, my schedule has been organized around rehearsals, concert dates, and making time to practice. I've had to delay family Christmas plans to perform at a midnight mass at the basilica. Options for my kids' spring breaks were impacted by if I had a dress rehearsal that week. In college, orchestra was graded entirely by attendance, and if you missed one of the daily rehearsals, you went down one full letter grade. Since moving to Milwaukee, Tuesday nights have been completely blocked off in my mind as rehearsal nights, and before I can commit to anything else on a Tuesday, I have to check my orchestra schedule.

Then the pandemic hit, and in March of 2020 everything came to a halt. Concerts were canceled. Rehearsals stopped.

Intellectually, I knew that continuing to practice was the correct and healthy choice. I tried at first. I pulled out pieces I knew would be fun and interesting to play. There was lots of time suddenly available to hone my skills in a thoughtful way that normally doesn't happen. But....

Creativity takes energy. In the early days of Covid, all my energy was spent elsewhere. Worry, survival, adaptation, grief... All of it saps energy. And knowing what you should do, doesn't always mean you can.

My viola stayed in the case. I wanted to play. Or more aptly put, I wanted to want to play, but the lack of anyone to play with or for killed my motivation in a way that surprised me.

The important exception was in the middle of summer when I was invited on a couple of occasions to perform along with the Black String Triage Ensemble. They perform protest concerts in response to violence against people of color in our city. The group was organized by a former student of mine, and he asked if I wanted to join them to play black spirituals at various locations to draw attention to racial injustice. One of those locations was in front of the courthouse in Kenosha during the second night of the protest marches there.

Music has meaning, and music has power. Enough power that we had to be forced to stop making music in Kenosha with teargas, apparently. But if I only got to play one concert in 2020, I'm glad it was that one. It was a clear reminder of what matters and how music can help.

Playing music with others, for others, draws on the finest elements of what it is to be human. We create something bigger than ourselves, something more beautiful than we could do alone. Something built from small moments of practice piled one upon the other to eventually create something grand and moving when everything aligns properly. It's a strangely momentous thing to come to take for granted, but when most of your life is built around a schedule of rehearsals, and concert dates--to the point that you consider them ordinary--you can forget.

While orchestras across the country and the world shut down for the year, Festival City Symphony found a way to forge ahead. The spread and death toll of Covid in our state made me too nervous to participate in the first two concerts of the season, and I asked not to be included on the roster. That was painful to do, partially because I deeply missed playing, and partially from guilt that so many other musicians were desperate for the same opportunity I was passing up. But after watching the FCS holiday show online, I was encouraged by the number of safety protocols. I agreed to play the first concert in 2021. I fully intended to back out if when I showed up to the first rehearsal it didn't feel safe.

Everyone was masked, including wind and brass players who had to have special masks with an opening to use when they needed to play, and covers over the ends of their instruments. Everyone had their own stand and was set far apart. The stands were tagged with people's names, and no one was allowed to touch anyone else's stand or music. The ventilation in the room was good enough that the air was completely replaced in it three times an hour. All foot traffic in the building had to move counterclockwise to help people maintain distance. We had to present a signed form upon arrival stating we did not have Covid symptoms or had been knowingly exposed recently. They took our temperature before we could proceed into the building. The length of the rehearsal was kept short, and there was no break when people would normally mingle. The concert itself will have no intermission and will finish in under an hour. There will be a cap of 150 audience members, masked, and in assigned seats set apart from other parties, with no seating in the first couple of rows closest to the orchestra. My family will watch with the virtual option.

So as much as you can mitigate risk for an orchestra to play together, I think they've managed it. I'm still nervous, but do not feel unsafe. And I am incredibly grateful to have a reason to open my viola case again.

However, the physical task of playing after so much time caught me off guard. It's work. Actual physical work that you need to train muscles to do. I don't think most people realize that. Simply holding up your arms for hours takes strength. In fact, when I was in college, there were guys in my dorm who thought it was impressive that I could hold my own in an arm wrestling match if I used my left arm. I haven't used those particular muscles in a while, and when I started practicing again I was really sore.

It's also weirdly cumbersome to play with a mask on. I wouldn't have guessed that, but it's somehow harder to see the way you need to, glancing past your instrument to the music and up at the conductor regularly. I'm not sure exactly what about the mask is in the way, it just is, so that will take getting used to as well.

I've been working my way back up to playing for longer stretches, and with a mask on sometimes, so that I'll be prepared for the concert. Plus I had to follow all the advice I give everyone else who comes through my shop, and gave my own viola a checkup and actually rehaired my bow and changed my strings. It made a big difference.

It will be a good show! If you want to watch it, the information is here. We'll be playing Holst's Brook Green Suite, Schubert's Fifth Symphony, and Frank Almond will be the soloist for The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams.

It's strange playing in a mask. It's odd not to have a stand partner. But the camaraderie is still there, even at a distance. And making music is magic. At one point last week in my first real rehearsal in almost a year, I became choked up with how beautiful and amazing it all was for people to work together and bring the air to life with history and sound and meaning. I've missed it. More than I realized.