A Year Like No Other

How many times in 2020 did you say: “What a year!” I hope you didn’t lose a loved one to Covid-19 or meet with financial ruin. Surely, someone reading this has and you have my deepest sympathies. Please keep reading. I have something to invite you to at the end that might be helpful no matter what you have endured. Add to the virus the shocking violence in America and abroad, and another anger-fueled election. We’re all pretty spent and hoping 2021 will be a huge improvement.

For me, this year was the “reset button” Margaret Atwood predicted in April. It started off on a high note. My boyfriend and I rang in the new year in Paris. What could go wrong? The transportation strike created so many problems getting around, we decided to extend our next stop in Seville and southern Spain. Not a big deal. It was a glorious trip. Sadly, it would be the last one for some time.

  

We returned to America more in love and reluctant to unpack our bags. We made a long list of all the places on this planet we wanted to see sooner rather than later. Bill would be retiring from a long teaching career at the end of August. We would marry and fit our travels around gala season (spring and fall). What had started two years ago as a side career for me—being an auctioneer for charity galas—had taken off.

The coronavirus had other plans.

All fundraisers stopped. Hit reset. Though I enjoyed raising money for good causes, it was quite stressful as live events always are. So many things can go wrong and do. Removing that pressure and replacing it with a keener sense of how fleeting life is, treating my mind and body better, and traveling whenever possible post-pandemic took over in my heart. I retired from benefit auctioneering and now focus on what I want to do more of (from home), like writing. With strong encouragement from the wonderful and extremely talented Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun and much more), I did a rewrite on a novel I’d had in a digital drawer for some time. It’s set in the remote Faroe Islands and centers around a young woman thrown into a professional and personal crisis—what all my novels are about. I hope it will be out next year though nothing is certain in these difficult times.

Our wedding plans were continually downsized as the pandemic exploded. Finally, a grumpy magistrate married us at the Hillsborough, NC, courthouse under a huge willow oak on a beautiful day in May. Family only joined via Zoom. Being the techie in this partnership, I was in charge of that and managed to have the camera pointing at the tree during the one-minute boilerplate ceremony. Who’s nervous? We did get to say our heartfelt vows to each other and our family after the camera was turned around. We can laugh about it now! The only sad part was not having my brother Art to walk me down the aisle. He passed away from prostate cancer in 2018. I’d lost my other brother, George, years before. I was the elder now. In marrying Bill, I also gained an extended family. His children—and now grandchild—are fantastic.

So, who is this Bill, you ask? It only took 30 years since my divorce and a million clicks on Match.com to find him. I said in my profile: “With the right person 1+1=3.” William Pardon is a mathematician. It may seem an odd pairing, but we both love getting lost in our work and have similar values about the things that matter. And we each think the other is incredibly sexy! In all, this was one of the best years of my life. If I hadn’t waited so long to find Bill, I’d feel guilty. It may sound a cliché yet it’s so true. In the end, love in all forms is all that matters.

We sold his home and quickly found a new one perfect for both of us. The sellers are renting back until their home in a CCRC is ready. If you don’t know what a CCRC is, consider yourself young. As we wait for that to happen while quarantined and snuggled into my “ma’am cave” meant for one, I’ve become obsessed with Planner5D.com, a site where I can place our furniture in each room of the future home to see how it looks before we move—and avoid moving things again and again. I can even paint the walls different colors. That, crossword puzzles, and trying new recipes can easily fill any down time. And reading books, of course, when I’m not doomscrolling. Some of my favorites I read this year:

Non-fiction
Cassandra King: Tell Me A Story: My Life with Pat Conroy
France Mayes with Ondine Cohane: Always Italy
Jean Nayar: Lucky: Anil Nayar’s Story
W. Chris Winter, MD: The Sleep Solution (If you have trouble sleeping, this is a must! It’s extremely informative and surprisingly funny.)
Jill McCorkle and Tom Rankin: Goat Light
Alex Trebek: The Answer Is . . .: Reflections on My Life (Watching Jeopardy! every night became a ritual when I was caring for Mama Jo that continues. I’ll never forget her words: “This show makes me feel smart and dumb at the same time.” It won’t be the same without him.)

Fiction
Lee Smith: Blue Marlin
Samantha Vérant: The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux
Jill McCorkle: Hieroglyphics
Chris Ould: The Faroes Trilogy
Roxanna Robinson: Dawson’s Fall
Anne Barrows: The Best of Iggy (Recommended for my six-year-old grandnephew and so hilarious I read it cover to cover.)

If you’ve been watching The Good Lord Bird on Showtime, read the James McBride book it’s based on that won the National Book Award. I dog-eared every page where I laughed out loud and at the end the book was twice as thick.

I’d like to invite you to a special livestream December 31^st from 7 – 8:15 PM EST of the Year-End Letting-Go Ceremony at the Won Buddhism Meditation Temple in Chapel Hill, NC. You’ll be asked to write down your heaviness/regrets from 2020 and release them into whatever form of fire you can create. I’ve done it onsite before and loved it. Click here for more info.

How did your life and/or thinking change in 2020?

Counting the many blessings,

Jo