Silver Linings

The ticking of a hand-wound clock and the voice of my father’s aunt were what I first noticed as I tried to sit quietly on a Victorian chair with curved wooden legs and a not-very-soft needlepointed seat. I wasn’t able to sit still for long. “Go into the kitchen and get a watermelon pickle,” my great-aunt said merrily. Legally blind due to glaucoma, she could see only shadows and silhouettes. I was an avid reader as a child, so blindness terrified me. Although she applied drops to her cloudy eyes, there were limited treatments and no cure in 1965.

Today I participated in a vaccination effort that was conducted at a church. Over the past few weeks, I have been reading about the faith community’s varied responses to the pandemic. While disappointed with the responses of some religious leaders, I was encouraged by others.

Today’s event brought me a sense of hope. It felt like a true meeting point of the faith and public health communities.

In the midst of all the hustle and bustle, I managed to ask some of the patients we saw about their everyday lives. A young woman told me she was working and schooling for a total of about seventy hours a week. A couple of people, who had initially indicated that they would be unavailable on the date specified for the second dose, modified their plans when they realized there was no alternate date for the second dose. One woman told me how she had been trying to get the vaccine for months. Another thought it would be unwise not to get the vaccine, even though she was nervous.

Even though I try to maintain an awareness of my assumptions, some of my interactions expanded my notions of human diversity. I was surprised

This winter, it seemed to me that silver linings were popping up everywhere, like starbursts cast as fairy dust from Tinkerbell’s wand. Everyone seemed to be finding them, but few had any meaning for me. When the vaccine first became available in the new year, I was desperate to get it. Newly diagnosed with cancer, I wanted all the extra protection I could get. I have now received both vaccines and do, indeed, feel safer.

But I’m still not seeing any silver leaking from the sky. Like a horse with blinders, I can see only straight ahead, and everything leads towards a doctor’s office, hospital lab or treatment room. No sunshine, no clouds, no silver linings in any of those places.  

And yet… masks! Being immuno-suppressed from chemotherapy means I need to be wary of going out in public. I’m quite sure it never would have occurred to me before to wear a mask, but now that they are mandated, it’s become welcome silver armor for me.

Then just last week a different color lining burst through the clouds of my despair. I learned about an organization for women with breast cancer. It

I will say you can have your silver linings. Keep them. Save them for when you need them and then see how wonderful they don’t feel. 

Understand what the price of one really is. Yes, I have learned to be grateful for the small, everyday mercies. And I really am, on most days. Yes, I know others have it much worse. Yes, maybe I am stronger, wiser, kinder. But actually I won’t ever know, will I?  Because there isn’t another me to compare it to. Yes, character, courage, all those things. But what if I would have been okay–and I really think I would have been–had I been left alone without all these opportunities to offer forgiveness, and courage and the brave smile, to show love to those who had hurt me and others, not to have borne witness to how cruel people can be to one another. Especially to children. 

I’m not so much angry, really, as tired of everyone thinking they have a silver lining to offer. We don’t hold them for others, and the price is significant. Like resilience, silver linings come after pain. And often a lot of it. Decisions–with no clear path–just whatever the gamble

As we mark one year of COVID-19, I am reminded of my uncomfortable relationship with anniversaries. Cyclic completion may warrant celebration, but also self-monitoring: How many of my goals have I met this year? What have I missed? What can I do better next year? Under this lens of surveillance, any repetition can start to look like regression. Circular time, for all its recurrences and renewals, chafes against the idea of linear time, which prizes productivity, trackable progress toward an aim, a forward-looking mindset.

I have anxiety. I can freely admit it and even laugh at myself now that years and years separate my terror from my present. I can acknowledge that it is better for me to stay on an SSRI consistently after several starts and false stops over the past two decades.

I have always gone to work and cared for the children and put one foot in front of the other and put on a brave face. But I have been nearly convinced at different times over the years that I had congenital heart disease, lymphoma, esophageal/ovarian/breast/brain/pancreatic cancer, hemochromatosis, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, multiple sclerosis, and leukemia. Sometimes I joke, “I’ve had every kind of cancer there is, even testicular cancer.” As ridiculous as it sounds, my racing mind could find a way for that to be so even with my complement of XX chromosomes.

Sometimes I have had understandable triggers for mental misery: a devastating college breakup; two miscarriages; a medical malpractice suit. At other times the panicky thoughts seem to come out of nowhere — noticing a tiny purple skin lesion or a sharp pang within my abdomen fast forwards immediately to my untimely death and my

It was the winter of 1991. We were a group of 25 or so Dartmouth College students on a language study abroad (LSA) program in Lyon, France. A few days after our arrival, the United States led a multinational coalition in an intensive bombing campaign against Iraq. This made Americans quite unpopular in Lyon.

When we’d enrolled in the LSA, we’d envisioned train-hopping through Europe during our free time, notre temps libre. We’d imagined bonding together over cheap French wine, chocolate croissants, and buttery baguettes. Instead, we had the war. La guerre.

Even before COVID, I tended to live an isolated life. I interacted with my colleagues and students at the Writing Center where I worked, and I chatted with other ushers at cultural events—but once I was at home, I welcomed the silence and aloneness that my apartment offered. COVID, however, has made me more cognizant of the value of people—of how friends have provided a silver lining to the darkness of this pandemic.

I wonder what I would have done if the parents of the children I tutor had not reached out to me during these past twelve months. They have grocery-shopped for me, brought me dinners, and stayed in touch with me on a regular basis. I used to tell my middle school students that friends are the family we choose for ourselves; how fortunate I am that my friends have chosen me to be a part of their extended families.

For the past five years, I have attended my city’s Broadway Cabaret. The Cultural Trust assigned me to a table with three other people, none of whom I had previously known. However, our shared love for Broadway turned us into friends who went to dinners and shows together

Dear Pulse readers,

I’d like to think that every cloud has a silver lining, and every unfortunate occurrence brings moments of grace.

That’s sometimes true with illness.

When my Belgian mother became ill with Alzheimer’s, it brought headaches and heartaches. After every fall or episode of getting lost, we’d try to talk with her about the future. Her answer was always the same: “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”