Carol Bergman

   Beyond  Pronouns

 

Jake Sully: I see you.

Neytiri: I see you.

 

-from  "Avatar," screenplay by James Cameron based on "Burning Chrome," a short story by William Gibson

 

For the first time since NYU's founding in 1831, students can add their personally selected pronouns, as well as the pronunciation of their names, to the faculty roster. This decision did not surprise; it's been evolving for a long time. To ignore its opportunities and imperatives would be #cisprivilege.  And what is cis? And what is #cisprivilege? I had vaguely, imperfectly understood, then I understood. I have always read Masha Gessen in The New Yorker and find her an outstanding clear-thinking source for all things Russian and trans. Forgive me, dear reader, if I slip now and again. I try to keep up. These changes in our culture and in our language are happening fast.

 

Like so much else, I suspect that NYU's decision was hastened by this past COVID year of invisibility, or partial visibility. We are blended in and out of the classroom, or framed by wee boxes on virtual platforms: I see you, I see myself in the camera's eye. Where are you? Where am I?  The images of ourselves and others are often elusive, so why not ground them, explore them, and redefine them with precise language as we await the day we will become three-dimensional to one another again. At which point, what will the world look like and sound like? How will we have changed? 

 

Just out of college, the cis daughter of a friend ran a support group for trans teens in a Mt. Sinai clinic in Spanish Harlem. She wasn't qualified,  she wasn't trans, but she was an empathetic facilitator. Working with the guidance of a social worker, she never flinched, never questioned the rights and desires of her struggling and suffering younger charges to find peace and acceptance, to get jobs, to protect themselves from abuse and worse. When she asked me to teach a writing workshop, I felt both curious and repulsed. Who were these young people? How did they get this way? What went wrong? Can they be fixed? As an educator, a parent, an espoused progressive, I knew better, but these inane and ignorant thoughts crossed my mind—shame on me. Years later, I have fewer questions, and more understanding, but as a writer and editor I still have a problem with plural pronouns becoming singular (he/she/him/her/his shifting to their/them) even though the psychodynamic imperative is now obvious to me.

 

Shifts in language follow changes in society. We now capitalize the word Black, for example, with reference to a Black person. Just recently, newspapers and magazines of record had discussions about this change as a consequence of the Black Lives Matter Movement; the decision was made decisively and quickly.

 

During a Zoom session last week, two students corrected my mispronunciation of their names. I didn't mind because it took courage to challenge a professor on the first day of class, and building courage to tell a story is key to my pedagogy. I was also pleased that they felt safe enough and self-confident enough to voice their names out loud for all of us to hear, learn, and appreciate. 

 The World Out There

 

 

I had a little bird/Its name was Enza/I opened the window/And in-flew-enza

 

-a 1918 children's rhyme

 

There's a big wide world out there, in case we've forgotten, I said to my husband the other day. He was gazing longingly through the slats of the blinds into the setting sun after we returned from a curbside pick-up at our local grocery store. It was too cold to stay out, even to walk. Our new apartment is bright, facing west and south, lots of windows. But the landscape is still out there, and we're here, hunkered down again as the numbers started rising in our county and the variants appeared in afflicted COVID-19 patients. The vaccine roll out is slow everywhere. We lucked out and got appointments—our second shot is next week—but we felt awful when we learned our local friends were not as fortunate. I had hoped to celebrate my March birthday with them in situ at Main Course, our favorite local restaurant, where exactly one year ago, almost to the day, we had our last indoor social gathering. So much for that idea. Even after we are fully vaccinated, the scientists tell us, we must remain cautious—distancing, masking, indoor gatherings still discouraged. No hugs for a while either. Oh, I cannot wait to relinquish the by now perfected virtual hug. It will take some adjustment I am sure. Will we be fearful, I wonder? Can we imagine the whole world out there hugging and hugging and hugging?

 

So, what's the upshot this week as I write? We are still distanced/isolated physically, but not bereft I'd have to say, after doing an informal unscientific survey, fortunate to have one another most of all, and to be deepening our relationships near and far with phone calls and zooms. Personally, I'm grateful that we moved closer to our daughter a couple of years before the pandemic and that we've had walks and talks on a regular basis. Had we not, oh, well I don't want to think about that; I commiserate with all the separated families. What must it have been like in 1918 without technology? How hard that must have been. So much heartbreak in the midst of coping and surviving, even with modern technology.

 

As for teaching, I have been impressed by the efforts all my students have made to stay connected with me and one another, mostly through their writing, but also on social media, email and phone. My NYU classes have been full with waiting lists, students from Canada and Portland, even Colombia this term. Intimate distance learning, if that is not an oxymoron, in proximity on the screen, backgrounds staged like a mirage: paintings, interesting book cases, plants, ceilings occasionally. The shop steward of the NYU union told me this week that meetings will continue on Zoom because people show up. How interesting that is: People show up.

 

I think we have to commend ourselves for showing up during the pandemic. We get online, we participate, we listen to lectures, go to museums, volunteer, continue working, continue loving, love even more. Most recently, I've been enjoying "Cocktails With the Curator" at The Frick, one painting every Friday, the perfect day for me as I always treated myself to a Friday museum foray when I lived in the city. Now I get to listen to an erudite curator talk, up close and personal. I hope digital cultural offerings continue after the pandemic is over and, if so, that I continue to take advantage of them. They are not a substitute for being in front of a work of art, or at a live concert, but they do amplify curiosity and knowledge.

 

The world out there, globalization beyond economic globalization, shared culture, shared concern, the world inside our homes, the worlds within us, history witnessed and written as we live and breathe.

Cicely Tyson: In Memoriam

 

 

I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word… And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say."

 

          From "Just As I Am" –Cicely Tyson's Memoir

 

The one-day memoir intensive at Gotham Writers' Workshop began early. I brought my breakfast, lunch and late day snack. I was dressed informally. Teaching is an aerobic activity for me and I sweat. It was spring, or maybe summer, sometime in the 1980's.  Please don't ask me the exact date; I'm not good with dates. Time passing, time immovable, a sense of time utterly distorted in the midst of this pandemic, impatience grating as the end approaches and then recedes with news of variants.

 

And then this morning, I read of Cicely Tyson's death, aged 96—when did she get that old? I was not surprised she had lived so long. I was not surprised she had finally published her memoir. Indeed, I was pleased she had finally conquered her resistance and found the right collaborator, Michelle Buford, a founding editor of The Oprah Magazine.

 

I had checked in with the admin at Gotham and was told that the room had been prepared for me—all of the chair desks in a circle. I remember that the room was bright, the light filtering through dirty schoolroom windows facing north. Gotham had not rented this space before so it was new to me. I left my belongings on a chair and went into the hallway to search for the bathroom. When I returned a woman was standing by the window gazing at the cityscape. I said hello, but she did not reply. Minutes later, as more students entered and settled, the woman remained standing by the window. I introduced myself, asked the students to introduce themselves, the usual routine, and I said to the standing woman, "Would you please take a seat." She turned to face me. A Black woman wearing over-sized sun glasses, a wig, a coat covering a slim, slight body on what would surely be a warm day. Camouflage.

 

"You will have to take a seat if you wish to participate," I said firmly.

 

So she finally took a seat but  still refused to introduce herself.

 

"I'll just listen," she said.

 

So I let her listen, but at the break, I went back to admin and asked about the woman.

 

"It's Cicely Tyson."

 

"I know who she is. She is disrupting the flow of the class. I have to insist that she participate."

 

"She's a celebrity."

 

"Today she is my student and that's all she is. I've interviewed a lot of celebrities. I get the attitude, I get the fear of exposure. But not in my class."

 

No, not possible. I had to ignore her reluctance—or  was it resistance—and let her stay, I couldn't ask her to leave, I was told.

 

Lots of prompts and read-backs. She didn't open a notebook, take out any loose paper, or participate in the discussions. I tried to pretend she wasn't there. I hoped she'd just leave, but when I returned from a break she was still there, arms crossed, coat on, behind her dark glasses. Then it was lunchtime. She walked out, took all her belongings. Good, I thought, she's gone.

 

I left the building to get some air, went to the park, and ate my sandwich. I got back to the room early having told the students I'd be available to chat informally. And there she was again staring out of the dirty window. This time I walked up to her and stood next to her, shoulder to shoulder. "What's going on?" I asked.

 

"My daughter gave me this class as a present. She wants me to write my memoir. I don't want to write my memoir."

 

"Okay, so look, if you are going to stay, you will have to participate. It makes the students uncomfortable, it's not right that you set yourself apart, and it's hard for me. Everyone knows who you are so you might as well take off those glasses. But when you are here, you are an aspiring writer and my student. You don't have to read anything aloud, but try to write to the prompt and say one or two things to the other students. I don't care if you leave, but if you stay, those are my rules."

 

I felt like a mom chastising a petulant daughter. I set the boundaries and she relaxed. I wished I had done it earlier.

 

Never too late. For the rest of the workshop, she wrote intensely and  spoke aloud ever so tentatively. That was enough for me. And I hope it was enough for her, too, that she had started her memoir, or that the idea and purpose of a memoir had been seeded in her.

 

 

 

Restoration

 

 

This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: "At the time, no one knew what was coming." 

 

        -Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

 

On Inauguration Day 2021 we learned that Seamus Heaney is one of President Biden's favorite poets and that he recited poetry in front of a mirror to tame his stammer. Every inauguration within my memory has featured a poet's perspective, a poet's sensibility, song and dance. In a time deadened by a pandemic, recovering ever so slowly from four years of toxic waste in Washington, pomp, ceremony, ritual and poetry was solace for our aching souls. But now it's over and the restoration of our lives continues in tandem with the restoration of our nation state's democratic first principles. To whit it is now incumbent upon us to look backward into the fault lines of our history—slavery, Jim Crow, white supremacy and the genocide of the indigenous tribes—to  understand how we almost lost our democracy.

 

Many historians were not surprised by the rise of Donald Trump. We need only return to the candidacy of Sarah Palin, not very long ago, as described in President Obama's  book, to understand what happened: "Hers was  a biography tailor made for working class white voters who hated Washington and harbored the not entirely unjustified suspicion that big-city elite—whether in business, politics, or the media—looked down on their way of life," he writes in "A Promised Land," the first volume of his presidential autobiography. It is a fascinating read, a reminder that President Obama thought of himself as a writer long before he went into politics. It's also a plea for continuing historical study, re-interpretation of that history, vigilance in the present, and activism.

 

***

 

At a webinar at Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz, NY this week, I heard the now standard disclaimer—which also appears on their website—about living on Munsee Lenape land: Historic Huguenot Street acknowledges that it is located on lands of indigenous peoples. These lands have been home to Esopus Munsee people for thousands of years, and are still culturally significant to Native Nations today. This disclaimer was amplified with a reference by Kara Augustine, the Director of Public Programming, to the enslaved laborers in the Huguenot settlement, four of whom lived in the 1760 Abraham Hasbrouck House, which is undergoing extensive restoration, a now twenty-year project paid for by the extant Hasbrouck family. Like other Huguenot descendants, they have a Family Association. Though their historical roots in France are modest, and they were persecuted and massacred as Protestants in a Catholic country, by 1760 the settlers were already wealthy and prominent. Their property ledgers included slaves. Centuries later they have what seems to be a fabricated coat of arms, an emblem of status we associate more with the Old World than the New.  

 

"Museums are fundamentally conservative," Kate Eagen Johnson, a history consultant, told us at the webinar. She specializes in material artifacts, all of which tell a story. She investigates, reconstructs, sometimes commissions replicas. All such restoration is a very long process requiring patience, she says. "The past is past and they [the museums that hire her] want it to stay that way." She went on to explain that the slaves, who lived in the cellar kitchens, were referred to as "the kitchen family," a historic euphemism, best abandoned in this era of racial justice reckoning.

 

Neil Larson, an architectural historian well known in Ulster County for the documentation and restoration of stone houses, revealed that the doors leading from the main house to the kitchen cellars were often kept locked. "Much that is said about how humanely white families treated their slaves, there still was a need for security…Kitchens were a space of isolation." Slave uprisings and slave runaways were feared by the enslavers for good reason; there were many precedents—in  Haiti, in Jamaica, in New York City in 1741. Indeed, enslavers trembled in the shadow of their self-inflicted turpitude.

 

We must ask: Is the Abraham Hasbrouck house being restored, renovated, stripped down to its essence, or re-examined and re-interpreted? Perhaps all of the above. How shall we consider the lives of those who lived and died there when it is reopened to the public? What words will the tour guides use to explain the lives of the Hasbrouck household in 1760? How will the signage change to reflect the re-interpretation?

 

Descendants of the enslaved population in New Paltz are hard to find and therefore cannot participate in this discussion. Before emancipation they were thrown into an unmarked pit, now known as the "African American Burial Ground," on the edge of town.  (See my blog post, "Chattel," of October 26, 2020).  After emancipation, a small settlement, including a church, formed south of New Paltz, some residents buried in the segregated cemetery nearby. At least the graves there were marked. But most former slaves fled New Paltz in search of work and more welcoming communities. Who could blame them?

 

AND THEN, ONE DAY, THEY WERE VACCINATED

 

Dedicated to all the front line workers, particularly Dr. Stephen Goodman in San Francisco, and the caring employees of the Institute of Family Health in New Paltz, NY

 

  

A friend just wrote to say she'd lost her best friend to COVID. Another (scientist) friend—let  me call him G in the Kafaesque manner—that  he'd had the virus in the spring, tested positive after his physical trainer called to say he was positive and another client was positive. G never had a symptom, "not even a sniffle," he said.  He quarantined for ten days, re-tested negative, and continued his shut-down life.  But he was left with a lot of questions, the kind of questions scientists treasure. He is both fascinated and horrified at the "success" of this virus, he told me. More than 50% of the spread is asymptomatic, therefore the rapid spread. The results of research into this phenomena will teach us a lot more, more perhaps then civilians need to know, or want to know, about deadly pathogens.  And now there is the new, virulent, more transmissible strain. "It's a footrace," Governor Cuomo tells us. Get the vaccine into our arms, stay vigilant. Well, we're trying. This week, an inauguration, and hopefully the start of muscular federal guidance and distribution of vaccine. Why the shortages? Why the scramble?

 

Meanwhile, still healthy, or recovered,  or asymptomatic Americans are queuing up for appointments to get the vaccine. If we can work the system, without gaming the system and jumping the queue, we'll be okay, our consciences will be okay. But what about the people who don't have computers  and can't work the system? Illness and death are great equalizers, but healthcare in the U.S. is not a great equalizer. Have we finally learned this lesson? Biden has already announced he wants to ensure "equitable" distribution, including prisons. It's a breath of fresh air.

 

These were my thoughts as I waited to get my first Moderna shot yesterday, together with ten other "eligible" citizens, including my husband.  

 

A nurse explained the protocol. By our side on the floor, a lengthy print out about the vaccine, its possible side effects, a timer, and a card with a return date on the back, one month hence. "And we have all the vaccine in house," the nurse explained, to offset concern about shortages.  We received the vaccine in our upper forearm, all very simple and familiar except for those of us with allergies: we had to stay an extra fifteen minutes to make certain we had no reactions.

 

I perused the surroundings. "That huge black thing, is that the refrigerator?" I asked the nurse. She laughed. Was it the first laugh of her long, complex day? "That's a vending machine," she said.

 

I don't know why I was fixated on the vending machine, or why I would have preferred that it was a refrigerator. A better story, perhaps? More so, if it had broken down. My writer's brain was winging away.

 

I tried to relax. The thirty minutes "eyes on" monitoring for allergies passed without incident.

 

In the parking lot, I heard, "Carol, is that you?" It was my friendly neighborhood banker, Al. Fitting that I should meet him on VACCINE DAY!  If memory serves, and goodness it seems an eon, I began Virus Without Borders more than fifty chapters ago with Al as the central character.

 

I didn't recognize him at first. His hair was long, and he was out of context, or maybe I was out of context.  He pulled up his pelt so I could see his forehead, his eyes spread wide over his mask.

 

"That's not helping," I said.  

 

Then, finally, I recognized his Queens accent.

 

"Al!" I shouted.

 

He inched towards me. My impulse was the same. I wanted to hug him. 

 

While We're Waiting

 

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passion and intensity.

 

-the first verse of "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats (1919)

 

 

There are days for this writer when only poetry will suffice. This week, these days of this week, only poetry calmed me. My parents and many others in what was once a European extended family witnessed Nazi terrorism in 1938. America was their refuge. I was relieved they were not alive on January 6th, another historic day of infamy.

 

The pundits have spoken, I have nothing to add, I will let this sorry event rest in my writer's brain and heart for now, though I am sure it will surface in my writing in the coming months. Today, I will go for a walk, study French, chat on What's App, prepare my syllabus, listen to opera, watch a documentary about the mayor of Ramallah and then set up a ZOOM conversation with friends. I will wait for a new administration to take hold, wait to be called for the vaccine. I will remain engaged and alert and hopeful while waiting.

 

And I have a dream. I have a dream that by my birthday—March  10—I  will be gathering with friends at Main Course in New Paltz, my new hometown, to celebrate. That day will mark a year, almost to the day, that the pandemic lockdown began. We weren't wearing masks, but I did bring Lysol to disinfect the table. That seemed quaint at the time, a bit eccentric. My friends were bemused, but also grateful. I made no apologies for my weird precautions; I was frightened. Just days later we were told that masks and distancing were more important than cleaning surfaces. 

 

We've learned a lot since then, some of us more quickly than others. I still get chills when friends and family tell me about their protocols, especially if they are much more lax than mine. Hanging out indoors, gathering, traveling to see family, chatting in the supermarket for too long, on and on it goes. And, by now, I really don't want to hear about what others have done, I only care about what I have done, and my immediate family has done—to stay healthy, to stay alive—and I still say, "say safe," at the end of every conversation with everyone I talk to, including my insurance broker, my students and my colleagues, the check-out woman at the supermarket and the mechanic who replaced the battery in my car.Life goes on, and though distanced, we are all in this together, we are connected, perhaps more than ever.

 

I remember my panic and bewilderment when Dr. Fauci said that all of us would know at least one person who had died  or recovered from COVID, or that the one person might be us, or someone close to us. This was not a serendipitous prediction, it was an informed prediction. The scientists saw what was happening—clearly.

 

I'm hoping this is the last pandemic my husband and I will have to endure in our lifetime. But I am almost certain it won't be the last pandemic in my daughter's lifetime.  She, her husband, and their smart circle of friends will know what to do when and if such a tragedy descends on Planet Earth again. They will have less fear, they will be more informed, they will remain steadfast, they will overcome.

The Vagaries of Life in a Plague Year

 

The vagaries of life,

Though painful

Teach us

Not to cling

To this floating world.

 

-Ikkyu

 

 

We were lost in that apartment; we couldn't entirely settle. It wasn't only that we had moved too quickly out of the city into a small town in a rural area with a very different culture, it was more than that: the wind off the ridge, the car covered in ice some mornings, charming at first, then the sale and resale of the building twice in three years, the town failing/or refusing to opt-in to the new state rent regulation law, and the rent rise each year upwards of 10%, then 16%, water out of the complex's two wells tasting of chlorine, the apple orchard owners across the road spraying and spraying and spraying, refusing to answer questions about what spray they are using. We knew we had to get out and had started looking before COVID, anticipating the end of our lease in December. Should we buy, should we rent? Prices were escalating after the pandemic hit, the entire swathe of Ulster County suddenly "gentrified." Of course, we were gentry, too, outsiders, newcomers, city transplants. Now we understood what exactly that meant for the "native" population: immediate escalating prices, nil rental vacancy, and rapacious landlords. Four families with children moved out of our complex within months of the last resale.

 

So, we had a long discussion: two writers with a small publishing business, trying to keep expenses down. Should we consider returning to the city where some buildings are reporting a 40% vacancy and de-escalating prices? Should we consider moving at all during COVID? What would it feel like to depart from these beautiful mountains, and our daughter just forty minutes instead of two hours away? Not good. We decided to stay. My husband promised he'd find us something, and he did.

 

COVID protocols were rigorous and we were exhausted just from packing up everything ourselves, no movers in the rooms while we were in the rooms, our daughter a double-masked interface between us and the movers, windows open, distance maintained. Moving day was December 29. I finished unpacking the books yesterday and promised myself a day of rest today—reading, writing, thinking, catching up with my students, writing this blog post. Then, last night, a magnificent snowfall decked the trees for a belated holiday celebration.

 

 

 

 

 

Snowshoeing in a Plague Year

 

People didn't march sobbing, they marched singing.

 

-Sharon Salzberg,"Real Change"

 

 

Dedicated to all who have lost loved ones to COVID in 2020.

 

I went snowshoeing for the first time in the Unison Sculpture Garden with my friend, Helene Bigley, a few days after the big storm. We'd been walking and talking once a week during the pandemic, all these months, regular and steady, a solace. Then we had the snow and the combination of sun and snow brought me back to my childhood ski trips. I needed to get out into Unison's fourteen magnificent acres, albeit on borrowed snowshoes. I loved it so much I know I'll get a pair of my own soon.

 

Unlike the smooth motion of cross country or downhill skiing, snowshoeing is more of a plodding experience, one oversized foot and pole at a time It seemed a metaphor for the year we've just experienced, how we moved through it and into it and, hopefully very soon, beyond it, one day, one week at a time. Early on, I decided that as a writer, it was my mandate to document the pandemic from my small corner of the world and to use my Authors Guild blog as a platform. "Virus Without Borders" has helped me to keep pace with unfolding events, and to process these events. As always, literature is my medicine.

 

And what have I learned as my blog book has reached forty-nine chapters? So many things: That I can make do with less. That solitude is an opportunity to self-reflect and reassess. That friendship, family and community are the mortar that holds us together. That technology is a friend when it is secure. That many are suffering more than I am suffering. That a pandemic in a war zone is more than a disaster, it is apocalyptic. That I will never stop caring about people beyond the borders of my nation-state and my life. That I love to teach as much as I love to write. That the distance between continents is miniscule compared to the distance between our beliefs and posited solutions. That art and artists, music and performance, must be cherished, encouraged and supported because the arts support and nurture us. That enjoying virtual events is a stopgap, but not a sustaining diet. That we need a more humane health care system and  an equitable economy, reforms in policing, criminal justice, education and energy sources. That we have awakened to these necessary changes and cannot retreat to life as it was before the pandemic, or before the fascist regime in Washington threatened our very being. America has changed irrevocably, the world has changed, and so have we all.

 

John le Carré : In Memoriam

 

 

 At a time when so many have lost their moral compass, I turn to authors who are grounded in ethical and humane storytelling, writers such as John le Carré, whose genre fiction reads like poetry, or philosophy. Though I never met him personally, I have a connection to him I hold dear. He wrote the foreword to my book, Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories.

 

Both my agent and publisher had mentioned that we needed a "name" to platform the book. They were searching for someone suitably high-profile while I was still gathering and editing the stories, not nearly finished by the time I was scheduled to attend training and war games at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. It had been arranged by the ICRC publicist, a Brit. He explained that I was expected to converse in French while on the campus, the diplomatic lingua franca, and I was rusty. So, when he picked me up from the airport, I prevailed upon him to speak English for the duration of our drive. "But you'll have to introduce yourself in French." he said, "and explain why you are here." Indeed, I was hoping to find an ICRC worker's story for the book and went on to explain the search for someone who would write a foreword. The publicist knew John le Carré's agent in London, Curtis Brown, which—stroke of luck, I thought—had also been my agent in London before I moved back to the United States.

 

In retrospect, these six degrees of separation made no difference, as David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, was not a man who seemed to care about networking, inner circles, and privileged connections. He had been active in humanitarian and human rights initiatives for a long time, an outspoken advocate, and as soon as he saw the proposal for my book, he agreed to write the foreword. It arrived to deadline, not a comma out of place. Together with a cover photo by the revered war photographer, James Nachtwey, the book was off and running on every continent. Neither man asked for much money. Their contributions to the project, which took two years of my life, were a gift. Perhaps they understood, before I did, its potential value and longevity.

 

When John le Carré died, I felt a great loss. I had read his autobiography, The Pigeon Tunnel, not so long ago, and had been thinking about his elegant acceptance of the prestigious Olof Palme prize just last year. He had donated the $100,000 prize money to Doctors Without Borders and, aged 88, gave a heartbreaking speech at the ceremony in Stockholm. What a piece of writing, what a beautiful man.

 

I was disappointed when he didn't attend the launch of the book in London in October 2003. So many years ago, now, yet it feels like yesterday that I awaited his arrival, the press in attendance. His agent came instead, with apologies. David was in the field researching his next book.

 

Scroll to the bottom of the press release for a link to the acceptance speech:

 

 https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/news/john-le-carre-accepts-olof-palme-prize

 

 

Where Have All The Elders Gone?

 

 

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time passing…

 

-Pete Seeger

 

 

I woke up thinking about three friends of mine who said similar things to me in the days leading up to vaccine approval. It seems that thoughts of "it's almost over," sent them into paroxysms of anxiety. All of them have been coping well, working, making the best of isolation. Now they've hit quicksand and started to sink. "It was a shock to realize we were in the vulnerable population," Eliza said. "I have never thought of myself that way before until I heard I'd qualify for a vaccine before my younger friends and colleagues. Then the New York Times published the calculator chart, and I was in the middle of the line. My confidence collapsed and I started to think about mortality. How much time will I have left when the pandemic is over? After all these months of hanging in, that was bizarre."

 

I was reminded of several soldiers I have met as they became civilians again and the difficulty they endured: they could not lower the adrenalin rush of battle quickly, or forget what they had done, seen and experienced. And they often felt alone no matter how many times they were told, "Your experience is not unique." That sounds comparable to the mantra, "We're all in this together."  Is that true? Yes and no. Together alone, maybe, or alone together.

 

Like soldiers, we've all been on alert for many months. We've become logisticians and strategists, plotting our visits to the supermarket and testing sites, ordering in supplies. But unlike UN logisticians, for example, we haven't been able to escape the site of the disaster, not that escape helps. A real-life logistician friend went into Haiti for a UN agency after a recent earthquake, set up his chair and satellite phone, studied and recorded the damage as far as the eye could see, and made a list of all the supplies necessary. Then he folded his chair, re-boarded the helicopter that dropped him in, and traveled back to New York. And though he slept in his own bed that night, assured that all he had ordered would be delivered within 72 hours, he was still shaky. That was the beginning of PTSD for him, or maybe a continuation, as he'd been in the field for many years.

 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We all have it now to some degree. But I also think that when those in the "vulnerable" population—and I am one of them—recover from this ordeal, our recovery will be different than those in their 30s, say, who hopefully have many decades of life in front of them.

 

"It erodes my trust in whatever time I have left," Marie told me. "I've lost touch, and I mean that literally. I haven't seen my kids. I haven't seen my grandkids. There'll be no Christmas this year. We live 3,000 miles away from each other. I feel as though I've lost a year of my life. Something is not right."

 

We don't hear many of the pundits talking about "elders" who live within the general population, and what our particular emotional challenges have been. Why not? Blinkered vision, I'd say, or ageism. We've been siphoned off, protected physically, yet segregated in an unexpected way. The truth is, if we are really honest, that elders disappeared a long time ago, or were left behind, dumped in nursing homes or simply abandoned as young people relocated to make new lives in other towns and cities, even transnationally, in search of opportunity, adventure and job stability, as we did ourselves when we were young, without consideration for anyone but ourselves. "We didn't raise our kids to stay close to home," my French friend Michel told me. His son lives in America; there won't be any visits this year.

 

Long before the pandemic, contact with relatives had often become virtual, which is useful, but also wasteful of generation to generation wisdom, not to mention the sensory experience of staying close. So far have we drifted from a sustaining multi-generational, interconnected society that I am not sure if such a utopian idea is still viable except in ersatz communities for the very rich, or in purpose-built pods on Mars.

 

Names have been changed to protect those who may be embarrassed by their vulnerability. I thank my friends for talking with me freely, knowing I am a writer who may use their stories in my work.