How Lucy Made Me Feel

Hello and Happy New 2023!

This rainy Sunday morning I’ve been reading. First, I read several Substack newsletters I subscribe to then I opened Kindle to my current book, Lucy by the Sea, which I finished. What a great book it was! I have read all of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy books and, until now, My Name is Lucy Barton was my favorite.

Beware, a bit of a spoiler follows.

Besides being a compelling story, Strout has intuitively, I think, connected all of us who have lived (are living) through the pandemic with this book. It is set during the beginnings of the virus, through lockdown, the creation of vaccinations, and into the very beginnings of our emergence. Reading the book brought back memories of the beginning time that I’d pushed to the back of my mind. Well, that’s normal, I think. When life becomes more like it was before a traumatic event, you’re so relieved that you don’t want to think of all you’ve experienced. I’ve had more than one life experience that I’ve pushed to the back. But, as I read, I remembered things she talks about in a visceral way. I’d flash back to the thing she was describing and I’d remember exactly how I felt at the time. And I realized, just as with my Hurricane Katrina experience, I blocked out the scary, hard memories. I think it’s a way of protecting yourself, your psyche. I lived through it and now I’m moving on. As Lucy says in the book, “It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us.”

For age and health reasons, my husband and I are still isolating. Yes, it’s true. I have only been out to get my vaccinations and twice to see my doctor for health issues that could not wait. It’s really not been very hard because I’m naturally an introverted person who rarely is bored with myself and the solitary things I like to do. I think growing up in the country, for the most part, conditioned me to not need too many people around me to be happy. Like Lucy, “My whole childhood was a lockdown. I never saw anyone or went anywhere.” Well, mine wasn’t that isolated but as a tween and a teen I certainly felt isolated in the summers when school was out. But that’s a whole other story.

The point of this is to say I wonder if I can even go out in public anymore without feeling anxious. I did ok when I got my vax and when I went to my doctor but in those cases everyone was still masking. I felt quite safe. Now, the thought of being in unmasked crowds is just unthinkable. Forget Mardi Gras. There’s no way! I’m hoping by Spring, or definitely Summer, the virus will have died down enough that we’ll feel ok about getting out. Lucy has me thinking along these lines since I read this bit in the book: “I wondered if I had become too frightened to return to New York again. It was funny, but I felt that in my enclosed world I had somehow become worse about that —- about my fears, I mean.

I could not stop feeling that life as I had known it was gone

Because it was.”

And that’s how I feel, too.

Oh, well, I went on a jag about isolation, didn’t I? Anyway, the book is amazing and one of the most impactful of my reading life. Definitely in the top ten.

Besides Substacks and the book, here are three things I read or listened to online that I think are excellent:

The Ballad of Sugar and Doo by Katy Goforth in Salvation South (fiction)

Slick by Marianne Worthington in Thimble Literary (poetry)

The Acceptance of Imperfection featuring Kathy Curto on the “Lets Talk Memoir” podcast curated by Ronit Plank

Well, I’m off to do more reading. My next book is the memoir Daughters of the New Year by New Orleanian E.M. Tran.

What books are you reading?