Through the 2020 Pandemic

Reading and Swimming My Way Through the 2020 Pandemic

Story By Nancy Greene

2020. A year of the unexpected. The year of the pandemic. Staying home, away from the usual get togethers with friends and family, cultural events, and crowds on the street. During this crazy year, I was granted time, quiet, and space. Keeping connected in new ways. Opening my mind to new experiences. In this year of the pandemic, I found new inspiration and peace of mind through reading, swimming, and nature.

I was planning on winding down my work as a legal recruiter in 2020. Retiring. A scary prospect. Planning to finally spend an entire summer in my beloved house in North Branch. When the pandemic hit New York City in March, so heavily that a city‑ wide lockdown was threatening to become a real possibility, my husband and I headed upstate along with so many others.

For years I had fantasized about spending the first six months of my retirement reading. I imagined myself continuing a work‑like schedule, but instead of going to my office, I would head to my living room or a library or a cafe, and read.

Reading has always been a big part of my life. I have so many memories of my mother and I going to the library in Maryland where I grew up and the bookmobile stopping on my suburban corner. Seeing all the volumes of Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder lined up on the shelves of the school library. Reading to my son every night from infancy through volume four of Harry Potter. No surprise that I have found the libraries in Jeffersonville and Callicoon to be quiet havens, and digital havens during the pandemic.

For almost 20 years I have been in the same book club. While the monthly zoom meetings are not nearly as satisfying as meeting in our respective homes, we have tried to keep it going. Right now we are reading Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott. I had never heard of this book before, but that is one of the benefits of the book club.

This year being this year, I discovered a new way to read a book. I call it the mini‑book club. A one on one book club. I currently have three minis going, and each one offers me a unique reading experience. First, my Israeli husband and I decided to pick an Israeli novel that we both wanted to read. He reads it in Hebrew; I read it in English. Through my husband, I get a perspective that I would never be able to grasp on my own. We have discussions spanning socio‑cultural‑political realms that we would ordinarily not have. We just finished the classic, My Michael by Amos Oz, and earlier in the summer read the more recent, Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar‑Goshan.

One day early in the summer my neighbor in North Branch, Gordon, suggested we read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy together. What? It’s 1200 pages and... but we

decided to give it a go with the understanding that we would each read at our own pace and could read other books as we went along. Discussing the book outside as our dogs played in the field, I discovered Leo Tolstoy as one of my new joys in life. I am actually reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina now.

Finally, my close friend since college, Barbara, and I decided that we needed a better understanding of American history in order to gain some perspective as we moved through the current complicated times. With that in mind we read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism. One or two chapters per week followed by an in‑depth conversation, usually on the phone. We have since moved on to Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt during WWII. These discussions bring us back almost fifty years, to our time in college, and now find us at a moment we never could have imagined back then. My in‑depth conversations with my husband and close friends have proven to be the most satisfying activities that I have had during this otherwise isolating pandemic year. They open the door to free wheelin discussions that begin with the book and move in unexpected directions, from the personal to the cultural and onward from there. These minis provide a safe space. To go deeper. To take chances. It makes it easier to think about reading a gigantic book like War and Peace when you have a friend to encourage you along on a no‑pressure basis.

In August 2019, before our daily lives changed so drastically, my sister, Meredith, passed away. She had suffered from Alzheimer’s for a number of years. I wanted to honor her somehow, and learned of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (www.curealz.org) when a friend made a donation in her memory.

My sister and I were both lifelong passionate swimmers. So it made sense to put the spotlight on something she loved. I started a charitable fundraiser, my first ever, in Meredith’s memory on behalf of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund and committed to swim 100 miles. Swimming Miles for Meredith and Alzheimer’s Research (www.charity.gofundme.com).

When the pandemic hit, my indoor pool closed with sixty-five miles to go. Luckily a friend upstate has a heated lap pool. Swimming outside in a pool brought back so many memories. Red Cross swimming lessons. Jumping into the deep end for the first time. My father cheering me on at swim meets.

Then I read a new book called Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui. Unexpectedly, it knocked me off my feet. I was inspired. Inspired to try swimming in a lake. My husband and I loved to kayak at Crystal Lake in Fremont. I would dip my feet in from the kayak, run my hands through the water, but that was it. In my mind, I was not a lake swimmer. But that was soon to change.

After reading the book in May, I went into the lake. Tsui talks a lot about cold water swimming, another idea I had never considered. The water was still cold and I lasted only a few minutes. The next time the water was a bit warmer and I swam the width of the lake and back. Finally I got it into my mind; I was going to swim the length of the lake and back, about a mile. My husband would follow me in a kayak. I was surprised that I felt so apprehensive. Probably it was because it was my first time swimming a distance in a lake, with no other swimmers around, no wall to hang onto, and no bottom to stand on. I made a plan and visualized the swim. I would lie on my back to take a breather and I would change strokes periodically. I felt it was a test. Am I the swimmer that I want to be or not? And I needed to get the mileage in for my fundraiser.

By the end of the summer I swam 40 miles in Crystal Lake. Every day I had some apprehension. Everyday I told my husband I hoped I could do it. Everyday the weather was slightly different. Everyday the water was slightly different, sometimes glassy, sometimes choppy. I loved it. I got stronger and stronger until there were days when I did the lake twice, two miles. At the end of every swim I tried to lie on my back and look at the sky and think of my sister, and hoped that she was watching and smiling. I was inspired by the character Prince Andrei in War and Peace. After the Prince was wounded on the battlefield, Tolstoy wrote, “There was nothing over him except the sky ‑ the lofty sky...how quiet, calm and solemn, not at all like when I was running, shouting, and fighting...And how happy I am that I’ve finally come to know it...”Swimming distance in the open water taught me patience. To slow down my mind. To move through the water without rushing. Without counting. To just enjoy the water and the trees and the sky.

The summer ended and the lake got too cold. I am back at the indoor pool, counting laps and smelling like chlorine. I completed my 100 mile swimming commitment and have re‑set the count while I look for another goal. The reading continues. My husband is looking for the next great Israeli novel. Barbara and I are planning to read the Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon‑Read next, and Gordon and I are tackling Middlemarch by George Eliot.

I know that I am fortunate to be at that stage in life when my son is on his own and my work is winding down toward retirement. That left me the time for the reading, swimming, gardening and otherwise communing with nature that I never made the time to do. But by keeping my eyes and mind open during this strange year, I have found inspiration in nature and conversations with my friends that I never imagined possible.

As the new year begins, vaccines are on the way and our former lives will hopefully return. I am waiting patiently to see what new experiences and inspirations come my way. In the meantime, I am grateful for all I have gained during the otherwise painful year of the 2020 pandemic.

Nancy is a Community Health Champion (CHC) with Sullivan 180, which is a vehicle to foster and support community efforts to improve the health of all residents. For more information about Sullivan 180 or the CHC volunteer program, please visit Sullivan180.org or call 845.295.2680. Nancy may be reached directly at nhgreene@gmail.com.

DO YOU REMEMBER....

The Victory Market was built in Jeffersonville in 1961. It is now Pecks Market. It was 3,000 sq. ft. and the most modern market in the area with 136 parking spots. The leading engineer and architect in Sullivan County at the time, Seymour A. Seiler designed it.

DID YOU KNOW...

Discussions for a lake to be established in Jeffersonville for power and amusement began in 1891. It was not until 1929 that the Lake Jeff dam was completed along with the Lake Jefferson Hotel.