Shavuot

[liv]

I managed to spend the night of Shavuot learning with my OSOs.

So my OSOs, their other co-parent, and their three younger children recently moved into a big house in the country. I am having some emotions about this. It's not like it came as a shock because they'd been talking about it for ages and had made an offer on the house months ago but were delayed by English conveyancing being generally terrible. But it's still a bit of a phase shift in our relationship after 6 years of being neighbours.

Moving day the middle two children came over to play with me and jack and be out of the way, and we had a generally excellent time. And once the movers were done we headed to the new house to join them for a first takeaway meal in the new house, and after they dropped me back home I couldn't sleep at all for worrying about how I would cope with being 11 miles away. A couple of weeks have passed since then, and everyone is settling in and I'm feeling a lot less anxious. My OSOs have made a big effort to come and visit when they have errands in Cambridge or just because, which has helped a lot with feeling cut off. I knew intellectually they weren't planning to abandon me, but experiencing the not being abandoned still helps.

So the festival of Shavuot (Pentecost) was Sunday night. I had concocted a plan to cycle out to the new house Sunday afternoon, and spend the night there keeping vigil, take the day off work Monday so I could recover and also cycle home. I knew in theory that I'm capable of cycling that far, because I'd tried it with cjwatson when they were considering making an offer on the place. But that was back in November and I really haven't cycled much since then, what with winter and bad pandemic situation. In fact the ride took me about 80 minutes, and I was lucky with the weather so it was generally pleasant. I was definitely tired afterwards, hardly a surprise given that is considerably more exercise than I've done in many months, but not so exhausted I was non-functional.

I perched on the corner of C's desk in order to Zoom-attend a service marking the anniversary of founding my synagogue. Then I had some time to play and socialize and it was generally pleasant, and I must admit that having seven people in a spacious house is an improvement on having seven people in a smallish 2-bed place. I took a nap while my partners put the children to bed, in the hope of being more awake for all night studying. Which didn't really work but mainly for the reason that even after a long cycle ride I wasn't quite ready to sleep at 8:30, and at least I was lying down and dozing which probably helped a bit.

Bedtime took ages as it sometimes does, and eventually at about 11 pm we settled down with plenty of caffeine and a couple of laptops and a list of sources I'd pulled together. We went through the text of the grace after meals to get warmed up, and then we ran into a snag: the internet went out at midnight. It seems that the temporary solution OSOs had put in place to tide them over until they got broadband connected had expired, after getting connected took longer than planned. We couldn't really get good enough signal on our phones either. So of course I couldn't access any of my electronic source sheets. And I hadn't brought my seforim with me because I didn't want the extra weight while cycling, and we couldn't even find OSOs' Christian Bibles as it was too soon after moving and they're still in boxes somewhere. So, um, that was kind of awkward!

I had at least brought Noam Sienna's Queer Jewish anthology A rainbow thread and we were able to read some cool bits from that, including a Sappho fragment preserved only by a first century Jewish writer called Pseudo-Longinus, and a thirteenth century prose love story about two male lovers taking revenge on an old lech who kidnapped the younger. And of course the 14^th poem about a religious Jewish trans woman. Sienna says that the poem may not be autobiographical and could be read as satire, but it's fairly clearly satire that is sympathetic to its trans subject even if she's imaginary. The anthology is an amazing work, but in order to find Queer material from the first century to 1969 it has to include quite a lot of negative stuff, like condemnations of certain types of relationships and gender expressions. Obviously it is good to have evidence of our Queer forebears in every time and place, but it's less delightful when that evidence consists of rabbis ranting about how they were morally depraved.

Then ghoti_mhic_uait went to bed, and cjwatson had a go at the one printed text I had brought, Mishnah Peah in the Blackman edition. I'd intended it as a complement to what's available on Sefaria, but it was a lucky choice since it allowed us to study while offline. We didn't get much further than the first perek, because we were kind of too tired to get our heads round the highly technical language. My plan had been to start with Peah, looking at Leviticus and then move on to the Mishnah, when we were fresh, but of course that didn't work out. Having run out of energy for complicated learning and still not having internet to go for any of the simpler stuff I'd lined up for the last couple of hours, we gave up at about 3 am.

So it wasn't the best learning ever but it was good to be with my people, and improvise in the unlikely to ever arise again situation of being without either books or internet! We woke up a bit before 10 and had a kind of low-key half asleep day as Shavuot often is. I didn't make it to shul because of still not having any internet, but did play some games with the children, and chatted, and it was pleasant. Andreas said I should come to visit more often, which was really sweet; I had visited about as often as possible since they moved in, just that wasn't very long ago! Also ghoti_mhic_uait made the most excellent kugel, a noodle one with the innovation of apple pieces. I had hoped to make cheesecake but didn't quite get my act together, so I will make it for Christian Pentecost next week, which isn't exactly right but it's close enough.

Then I cycled home, a bit more slowly on the return leg, possibly because I was both physically tired and underslept. But anyway, it's totally doable, and on days that are not Shavuot and I'm not staying up most of the night, I should have no problem combining a visit with working from home at my partners' new place. I'm quite looking forward to doing that regular 11 mile ride; it should get me much fitter than I have been through the pandemic, and given that they ended up moving at the start of May, I've got the whole summer ahead of me before I need to start worrying about bad weather or darkness.

It is crystal clear that this new place is the right compromise between having enough room for everybody, and location. And they're in a kind of ridiculously pretty village surrounded by fields and with views across the Fens to Ely. The village isn't completely devoid of public transport though connections are not brilliant; I'm somewhat hoping that by autumn I'll feel comfortable taking buses and trains when cycling becomes less attractive. I think some of my emotions are around the fact that I generally think this is set-up is a bad idea; families being forced to move miles out of town in order to be able to afford reasonable housing, and then needing to rely on a car to actually participate in public life. I don't mean it's a bad thing for individuals to do that, and I'm certainly not criticizing my partners for making the choice, I mean it's bad to be in a situation where that's the viable option. I wish urban housing was even slightly affordable and not both cramped and expensive, I wish rural villages had proper public transport connections, and don't even get me started on cycling "infrastructure" – the last five miles of the route to the new place is just along the side of a fast road with not even a painted cycle lane, and it's just horrid, and there's no alternative cycle route. I had been able to avoid getting into that urban flight situation because I'm both relatively rich and childfree, and I want better options to be available for everybody but particularly for the people I'm closest to.

Also I am anxious because we're still, in fact, in a pandemic. I have really benefitted a lot from being bubbled with my OSOs, and before that from getting to interact with them in person but socially distanced. I'm scared of losing that now we're further apart, even though I don't think that's entirely rational, I think we will probably get nearly as much time together as before, it's just slightly less convenient. It's hard to imagine what their new life will be like, how much we'll ever be able to get back to normal, and how much we'll be making delicate risk calculations about shared air and socializing. England relaxed pandemic restrictions as of Monday, and OSOs called a polycule meeting to discuss revising our safety agreements. That was a very good, productive discussion, and the fact that they drove over and sat round our table drinking tea was another reassuring thing that we're not going to be unable to talk due to their more remote location. But it was also hard.

I absolutely think it's too soon to encourage indoor leisure activities, but also people are desperate after the gruelling months of the recent wave. When they first started offering vaccines to our age group, we had initially said we wouldn't change our behaviour after only a single dose. However the conclusion of the discussion was that the big household can't cope with never socializing indoors or using public transport, while also living in a village and not having any friends within walking distance. So we agreed that they can use their judgement, and do lower risk indoor activities and I feel protected enough by first dose that they're not significantly exposing me. For myself I'm planning to continue socializing outdoors only until my second dose, but that's fine, we don't have to keep to the exact same standards any more. I guess it's just a bit of a shock, because I had been expecting to continue as we were and it feels as if circumstances have changed rather abruptly. So intellectually I do think the current agreement is pretty safe (that's why I agreed to it!), but emotionally there's some adjustment, which I'm sure is a common experience for lots of people who have been ultra-cautious for more than a year.

So yes, lots of changes, lots of feelings. Having had the positive experience of celebrating Shavuot together, including the travel, helps a lot. Another step I've taken is to set myself a challenge to leave the house every day, because if I don't have the motivation of just popping round to OSOs' I'm liable to get stuck indoors and that's not great for my wellbeing. I'm playing Pokemon Go again, and have treated myself to a fitness watch which gives me credit for moving around more. And in a few more weeks I'll have my second vaccine; I'm starting to believe I'll actually make it to that point, and after that who knows but I have some hope it will be better than 2020-21.

Comments

[redbird]

I definitely sympathize on the adjustments there; in our case it was complicated by me being fully vaccinated a month before adrian_turtle and cattitude. We are taking advantage of them being fully vaccinated (cattitude as of today, Adrian tomorrow) to have lunch together at a restaurant. We've picked a restaurant with an outdoor seating area that long predates the pandemic, and one of the things I want to think about, and talk with them about, is whether we're comfortable dining indoors in restaurants yet, and if not, at what point will that change? (The US, and then Massachusetts, changed their guidance rather suddenly.)

[liv]

Yeah, it's sort of weird because I'd floated the idea of discussing what we should do if our vaccinations ended up being staggered, and that was when we concluded there was nothing to discuss as we wouldn't change behaviour after first dose. In fact that didn't happen, it was all four of us within an hour of each other. jack was called up early for reasons that are unclear, so he's now building up immunity from his second dose. The other complication for the polycule is the children; UK haven't yet approved any vaccine for under 16s, and even if we do follow the US and approve for 12+ that still doesn't cover Andreas (9), and we're sort of relying on breastmilk immunity for the one-year-old but it all feels like a bit of a gamble. And then the timing was such that the house-move, us getting our first doses, and the law changing all happened within a couple of weeks, so that was a lot of changes in circumstances all at once.

The removal of restrictions here didn't exactly happen suddenly, it's according to the roadmap released in March, but they went ahead with a lot of opening even though most public health experts advise against it in the light of variants of concern. So no masks in schools (but they are still mandated in other workplaces), and indoor hospitality is open, and... we're only running at just over half the population vaccinated at all and less than a third with second dose. So that's a lot of people under 40 who are expected to go back to school and work without much protection other than their youth.

I'm really glad to hear you've all had both doses and can have lunch together! I like the plan of choosing places that already did outdoor seating. Now that the law no longer requires open on two sides to count as outdoors, a lot of restaurants and pubs here have switched to dreadful fake-outdoor stuff, like tables in closed greenhouses or marquees. So none of my polycule will be patronizing those, nor eating fully indoors, until we've had our second doses in July.

[redbird]

There are a couple of places I would otherwise be patronizing, except they've got tables outdoors, technically, in what are effectively individual cloth/plastic tents for each table. Which as far as I can tell might be safer for the customers than eating indoors around other diners, but is no better for the staff, maybe worse because of the lack of ventilation, and would probably be less comfortable to sit in than an actual building.

I would sit under an umbrella, outdoors, because that's some protection from sun or rain, but still in the open air--cattitude and I did that yesterday, at a table set up in what's normally the street, with concrete barriers between it and the one remaining traffic lane.

[ewt]

Eleven miles is a decent distance when you've not been cycling much for ages, well done.

Lots of transitions at once -- I hope together you continue to manage to navigate them all relatively smoothly.

[liv]

Thank you! I am quite proud of the cycling and I'm hoping to get to the point where it doesn't feel like a big challenge. You're right, it is just a lot of transitions, getting our vaccines, the house move, the May 17 opening up, deciding that we no longer need to get explicit permission from the whole polycule for all indoor activities, all within a few weeks. This seems like a good reason to be a bit emotionally jangled, when I think about it.

[lethargic_man]

Make sure you have a proteinaceous meal the same day; it'll make a difference to whether you feel able to cycle again the next day!

[cesy]

That's a lot of changes and it sounds like you're all managing well in the circumstances.

[liv]

Thank you for saying, it does help when people comment on my angsty posts.

[rmc28]

That's a lot of change - I'm glad you were able to get out to the new place and I'm so sorry the cycle infrastructure is so poor. (I too would like to go visit the family when I get enough of a grip on my own schedule and commitments to get in touch and arrange something, but I hesitate a bit at the fast rural road with no bike lane - even though that's how I used to cycle all the time from 12 through 19 where I grew up.)

[oracne]

I'm also making an effort to get out of the house more.

[silveradept]

That is a lot of change packaged in a little bit of time, and it sounds like you made good decisions about all of it, even if the adjustment part hasn't fully happened yet.

There's a lot of anxiety in our space as well, as it seems like the entire idea of "people who are fully vaccinated can begin to ease their vigilance" has been interpreted maliciously as "no need for any precautions any more," when that's demonstrably untrue.

Here's hoping you catch some shinies while you're out doing your cycling and exercising.

[verazea]

Much sympathy. I hope you're able to adapt to the changes successfully in a way that works for you.

[sfred]

(I am catching up and reading older posts first.)
That sounds like a lot of adjustment. I hope it's going OK. I knew they were moving but hadn't realised they'd be so far away.

I too am frustrated by the housing/infrastructure stuff.