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livSo, summer is over and England is still completely failing to deal with the pandemic.
27 weeks of staying home as much as possible. 190 days. Slightly under 12 weeks since serious restrictions were lifted.
When I first saw an article speculating that we might have to have the High Holy Days online I was a little despondent. But in just a few weeks it's become completely normal. Now we're expressing the hope that maybe by next new year we'll be back in shul, at least partly. But even that seems questionable.
Reaching September with new cases rising steeply (already 4X what we saw at the start of the month) is depressing. Scary, yes, winter is going to be awful, but on a very superficial, day-to-day mood level, it's hard not to dwell on regret that I didn't do more fun things in July and August when things were relatively safe. I thought the second wave was going to come sooner, with the reopening in early July.
Given this, we made a point to make the most of the last weekend before the new year. We travelled to visitjack's mum, meeting up at Coton Manor gardens which is about halfway in journey time between her place and ours. We took the small risk of using their toilets and ordering food from their café, and being around a fairly large number of people outdoors, in order to actually spend some time together for the first time in months. The gardens are absolutely ridiculously gorgeous; I got dragged round a lot of gardens when I was a kid and thought I wouldn't voluntarily do that as an adult, but Coton Manor is anything but boring. It has flamingos! And really imaginatively laid out gardens with beautiful colours. The weather was perfect too, and we had a really lovely afternoon.
Then the law changed, permitting people to see their live-out partners without social distancing, but also forbidding any gathering of over 6, losing the exception we'd been relying on for two households. We discussed this with our OSOs in the light of the bad infection situation, and the coming bad weather when hanging out in the garden 2m apart will be a lot less tenable. We agreed to pod the two households, including the children because there's really no point social distancing from the children if we're hugging their parents, but to arrange things so that we are always a group of less than six. Which is made somewhat easier since we've agreed that the risk of meeting indoors is acceptable.
And then we started the Sunday school term, still on Zoom although the children are mostly back in in person school. I have made arrangements to tutor one of my yr 5 kids separately, since he was really struggling with Zoom last term, and we had our first lesson in his garden, while the parents valiantly kept his curious younger siblings inside so we didn't end up with an illegal gathering of more than 6.
And then it was Rosh haShana. I had almost nothing to do with the organizing this year; Stoke decided not to hold services at all rather than risk either infecting people in person, or violating halacha by having online services. So I was able to "attend" my own home community, Cambridge, but we continued on Zoom as we have been for the past half year. We considered broadcasting the service from the shul, with only the leading team physically present, but decided against it, and I think that was the right call. The Zoom service felt intimate and community-focused, and we could invite various people to read short sections without worrying about how many people were in a room together. And sad though it is we've got really good at this after more than two dozen online shabbats. Second day tashlich, the ceremony of casting sins into a river, got cancelled because the rule of six came in a few days before the festival. The movement are working on a new prayer book for the HHDs, and I was apprehensive because I'm fond of the old book, for all its masculine default language and its overly heavy font. But the draft new book keeps all the content, but is better laid out and more inclusive, so it's only an improvement.
The Ten Days were in some ways the hardest part of the festival season in a pandemic. The Ten should normally be personal and quiet, but given that I haven't eaten out or gone to a party or even a low-key hangout with friends since March, there was almost no contrast. And also, usually I spend the intervening days preparing for Yom Kippur, and squeezing my own self-reflection into the gaps between preparing things for the community. Not having that should have meant I had way more time to get spiritually ready, but in reality meant I just never really got started. I was invited to help teach a Yom Kippur afternoon study session, with a very senior humanities academic I'm slightly scared of, and we had a lovely conclave in her garden plotting our teaching and enjoying the last of the sunshine.
As pathetic fallacy always tells us it should, the weather became suddenly autumnal between RH and YK. We planned an outdoor, socially distanced visit withdoseybat and verazea, and it ended up being really windy and not at all great weather for wandering around a London park. It did me the world of good to see them, but this is definitely a glimpse of things to come over the next few months, when outside socializing is going to be a real challenge. jack organized a small pub meet in a beer garden, again in not really ideal weather but some socializing is needful.
Yom Kippur yesterday was... I don't quite know what to say. It was what I want Yom Kippur to be in most ways, even though my community were inside my computer. It was nice to be at home so that during breaks I could go outside and take a few breaths of fresh air (some nice autumn sunshine returned for the day) without the awkwardness of being in a town full of people for whom the day doesn't mean anything. It was nice to be already at home when it was time to break the fast. I missed my Stoke community, the experience of holding that whole emotionally complicated service. But it was good to hear the tunes from my childhood and some beautifully sung new melodies, it was good to have a liturgy that makes theological sense to me and isn't overly repetitive.
If you are planning to celebrate Christmas, I really suggest you start thinking about it now. You don't know what the law will permit (maybe they'll just relax all restrictions for the festival that the majority celebrate, not like those weird religions that have festivals in September, but maybe they won't, and even if you're allowed to travel all over the country and hug as many people as you want to, will you feel safe doing that?) We're not going to have a vaccine by Christmas, and most certainly it's not going to be over by Christmas in the absence of a vaccine. Prepare yourself emotionally and practically for how the season will work. If you're going to see family, what precautions will you need to feel safe? If you're going to attend services will they be online or in person? For me I feel like we've gone through the two hardest times: Pesach, right at the start of lockdown when everything was scary and uncertain and we were apart at the time which is most family centred. And now Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur, the times when we usually gather the whole community and the services are so profound and essential.
27 weeks of staying home as much as possible. 190 days. Slightly under 12 weeks since serious restrictions were lifted.
When I first saw an article speculating that we might have to have the High Holy Days online I was a little despondent. But in just a few weeks it's become completely normal. Now we're expressing the hope that maybe by next new year we'll be back in shul, at least partly. But even that seems questionable.
Reaching September with new cases rising steeply (already 4X what we saw at the start of the month) is depressing. Scary, yes, winter is going to be awful, but on a very superficial, day-to-day mood level, it's hard not to dwell on regret that I didn't do more fun things in July and August when things were relatively safe. I thought the second wave was going to come sooner, with the reopening in early July.
Given this, we made a point to make the most of the last weekend before the new year. We travelled to visit
jack's mum, meeting up at Coton Manor gardens which is about halfway in journey time between her place and ours. We took the small risk of using their toilets and ordering food from their café, and being around a fairly large number of people outdoors, in order to actually spend some time together for the first time in months. The gardens are absolutely ridiculously gorgeous; I got dragged round a lot of gardens when I was a kid and thought I wouldn't voluntarily do that as an adult, but Coton Manor is anything but boring. It has flamingos! And really imaginatively laid out gardens with beautiful colours. The weather was perfect too, and we had a really lovely afternoon.Then the law changed, permitting people to see their live-out partners without social distancing, but also forbidding any gathering of over 6, losing the exception we'd been relying on for two households. We discussed this with our OSOs in the light of the bad infection situation, and the coming bad weather when hanging out in the garden 2m apart will be a lot less tenable. We agreed to pod the two households, including the children because there's really no point social distancing from the children if we're hugging their parents, but to arrange things so that we are always a group of less than six. Which is made somewhat easier since we've agreed that the risk of meeting indoors is acceptable.
And then we started the Sunday school term, still on Zoom although the children are mostly back in in person school. I have made arrangements to tutor one of my yr 5 kids separately, since he was really struggling with Zoom last term, and we had our first lesson in his garden, while the parents valiantly kept his curious younger siblings inside so we didn't end up with an illegal gathering of more than 6.
And then it was Rosh haShana. I had almost nothing to do with the organizing this year; Stoke decided not to hold services at all rather than risk either infecting people in person, or violating halacha by having online services. So I was able to "attend" my own home community, Cambridge, but we continued on Zoom as we have been for the past half year. We considered broadcasting the service from the shul, with only the leading team physically present, but decided against it, and I think that was the right call. The Zoom service felt intimate and community-focused, and we could invite various people to read short sections without worrying about how many people were in a room together. And sad though it is we've got really good at this after more than two dozen online shabbats. Second day tashlich, the ceremony of casting sins into a river, got cancelled because the rule of six came in a few days before the festival. The movement are working on a new prayer book for the HHDs, and I was apprehensive because I'm fond of the old book, for all its masculine default language and its overly heavy font. But the draft new book keeps all the content, but is better laid out and more inclusive, so it's only an improvement.
The Ten Days were in some ways the hardest part of the festival season in a pandemic. The Ten should normally be personal and quiet, but given that I haven't eaten out or gone to a party or even a low-key hangout with friends since March, there was almost no contrast. And also, usually I spend the intervening days preparing for Yom Kippur, and squeezing my own self-reflection into the gaps between preparing things for the community. Not having that should have meant I had way more time to get spiritually ready, but in reality meant I just never really got started. I was invited to help teach a Yom Kippur afternoon study session, with a very senior humanities academic I'm slightly scared of, and we had a lovely conclave in her garden plotting our teaching and enjoying the last of the sunshine.
As pathetic fallacy always tells us it should, the weather became suddenly autumnal between RH and YK. We planned an outdoor, socially distanced visit with
doseybat and verazea, and it ended up being really windy and not at all great weather for wandering around a London park. It did me the world of good to see them, but this is definitely a glimpse of things to come over the next few months, when outside socializing is going to be a real challenge. jack organized a small pub meet in a beer garden, again in not really ideal weather but some socializing is needful. Yom Kippur yesterday was... I don't quite know what to say. It was what I want Yom Kippur to be in most ways, even though my community were inside my computer. It was nice to be at home so that during breaks I could go outside and take a few breaths of fresh air (some nice autumn sunshine returned for the day) without the awkwardness of being in a town full of people for whom the day doesn't mean anything. It was nice to be already at home when it was time to break the fast. I missed my Stoke community, the experience of holding that whole emotionally complicated service. But it was good to hear the tunes from my childhood and some beautifully sung new melodies, it was good to have a liturgy that makes theological sense to me and isn't overly repetitive.
If you are planning to celebrate Christmas, I really suggest you start thinking about it now. You don't know what the law will permit (maybe they'll just relax all restrictions for the festival that the majority celebrate, not like those weird religions that have festivals in September, but maybe they won't, and even if you're allowed to travel all over the country and hug as many people as you want to, will you feel safe doing that?) We're not going to have a vaccine by Christmas, and most certainly it's not going to be over by Christmas in the absence of a vaccine. Prepare yourself emotionally and practically for how the season will work. If you're going to see family, what precautions will you need to feel safe? If you're going to attend services will they be online or in person? For me I feel like we've gone through the two hardest times: Pesach, right at the start of lockdown when everything was scary and uncertain and we were apart at the time which is most family centred. And now Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur, the times when we usually gather the whole community and the services are so profound and essential.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-09-30 12:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-09-30 08:48 pm (UTC)(I live 3 miles from my girlfriend of 15 years. We haven't used that particular term, but I've found myself doing things like referring to her mom as my 'mother out law.')
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-04 07:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-08 09:32 pm (UTC)Welcome, anyway, sorry for not replying to your earlier comment. Just to clarify, my relationship is a polyamorous quad; one of my partners is my husband who lives with me, the other two are themselves a married couple, whom I refer to as 'Other Significant Others' or OSOs for short. They live together with their children and a third co-parent, whom I refer to using the polyamorous jargon term 'metamour', ie a partner's partner.