A Lesson from the Goddess Jeannette

(Note: I wrote this post two weeks ago, before the sudden death of our beloved Pomeranian Nala, the galvanizing murder of George Floyd and resulting rash of protests and violence, a death in the family and too many things to even recount. I was so knocked off my axis that I was unable to post in a timely fashion, thought to update this entry to reflect recent events but decided to keep this as I wrote it, complete unto itself.)

Monday dawned bright and crisp, spring arriving in a pandemic-scarred Manhattan, nature asserting her glorious self despite the human crisis. I awoke bleary-eyed, having been roused several times in the night in tandem with my husband, recuperating from a serious ankle injury some three weeks earlier.

My time in quarantine has been bracketed by the Before and After eras of his accident, just as all of our lives are bracketed by the BC – Before Coronavirus and the now.

In the Before the Accident era of the quarantine I found myself possessed of energy, good humor, a sense of optimism and focus. I was busy with several projects that engaged my interest and felt productive and creative. I divided my time at home with careful visits to my elderly parents, wearing a medical grade mask and protective gear, bringing food and good cheer. Even the week following his fall -- which included a terrifying breathless journey to a safe Urgent Care and then a COVID-free ER (in NYC!!!), the hospital admission, tests, swift medical consultation and emergency surgery – found me proactive, organized, calm, competent.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised that following the initial week home, I crashed. Big time.

I stopped wanting to speak with friends. I slept in the clothes I had worn during the day. I began obsessing over the ubiquity of science- and reality-denying Trump supporters on my Facebook feed. I found myself increasingly unable to tune out the daily antics of Trump himself. The death toll kept climbing. Mother’s Day was approaching and I hadn’t seen two of my three adult children in months, was sharing my grandson’s first year through FaceTime.

A steady theme running through my days was the safety of my parents, living independently but with shifts of caregivers. The thrum of anxiety was my constant background noise.

Going outside was wrought with peril, beginning with navigating the common spaces of our apartment building. A refrigerated morgue was parked down our block, next to the hospital. Sirens pierced the air day and night. I avoided the elevator, taking the stairs...which is where my husband had fallen. I held my breath while bringing the garbage down to the basement, despite my mask. I veered away from unmasked people on the sidewalk, some smoking, other running uncomfortably close by. When we had a visiting nurse and physical therapist come to the apartment, I ran to open the door for them, then retreated inside the apartment, shouting directions for them to my husband in our bedroom. A post-operative visit to the orthopedic surgeon on the Upper East Side was nightmarish as we encountered a crowded waiting room, receptionist without a proper mask and no hygienic protocols observed.

Like most everyone else, we lost friends and loved ones, attended Zoom funerals and shivas. There were days that Facebook seemed like one long obituary section.

At home, I was on-call in a rather intensive way, given the extent of my husband’s injury. The trauma he suffered was not limited to the fall itself; he was also processing the freaky corona-time hospital experience. The nurse’s bell I bought him clanged constantly and I contemplated throwing it out the window.

I alternated between feeling sorry for him and for myself.

Though I was sharp and strategic on Zoom calls, the second I hung up, I could not recall what I had promised, what I was supposed to do, what the project was even about…and subsequently did nothing.

Actually, that is not true. 

I was occupied nearly full-time in a completely new endeavor: active, full-time despair.

Despair wallpapered my daily life. It provided my every meal. It served as my sidekick.

I was totally adrift in an ocean of hopelessness.

And then I saw a text from Jeannette, also known as The Goddess Jeannette, my friend and partner in a remarkable project.

Her text told me that she missed me, wondered how I was. She knew about my husband’s accident and was checking in with me. She had a few things she wanted to share with me as well.

Guiltily (because I had dropped my correspondence with her) then gratefully, I texted back to let her know I could speak during my daily walk on the nearly empty Columbia University campus, which was the only place I felt safe to walk.

I swam through the familiar murky waters of hopelessness but somehow managed to wash my face, tie up my sneakers, grab my mask, phone and hand-sanitizer and head out the door.

Hitting the campus, I made the call and when I heard her voice…rich, melodic, multi-dimensional, warm, wise…everything changed.

Early into the pandemic, my friend Rabbi Ellen Bernstein pointed out the blessing of our technology in keeping us connected. Newly isolated during the most social/communal season of the Jewish calendar -- Passover -- we connected through Zoom, FaceTime and our cellphones.

While it has become fashionable lately to bemoan the ubiquity of our screens, the pandemic reversed that concept.

How blessed we are to be able to be together in our quarantine, defying the laws of physics!

And now, owing to this technology, I was together with Jeannette, she in her home on Long Island, me tentatively treading this unpopulated section of the Columbia campus, glancing around nervously before removing my mask.

I asked my friend how she was.

“Darling, you know that I’ve been in quarantine my whole life. This is no different, really.”

I knew Jeannette’s story well, after all, I am editing her memoir. Afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis since her early 30’s, Jeannette grew up on the premises of institutions for the criminally insane, the child of Holocaust survivors. Since I was first introduced to her story, I marveled at her optimistic spirit, keen sense of humor and sheer strength of will…made all the more remarkable by the adversity she has faced her entire life, the sheer amount of which seems nearly statistically impossible.

Jeannette Perutz Elsner was born to Shoah survivors from Poland who arrived on this shore alive in body but decimated in spirit. Seeking cover, they opted for a life of hiding in plain sight, living among the “feeble-minded and criminally insane” residents of three separate “snake-pit” state institutions.

Even before her MS was diagnosed, Jeannette survived a number of improbably freakish medical conditions. Her best friend was killed in an accident when she was a young teen. She survived sexual assault at the same time and managed to extricate herself from a coercive, abusive relationship with her married mentor as a young student in clinical psychology.

Now, despite her inability to walk, despite her diminishing vision, despite the excruciating pain that is her constant companion, despite the multiple failures of her neurological system, Jeannette wakes up each day, spends hours completing tasks that take minutes for those of us who are neuro-typical, exercises to Motown music and faces each day…not without despair, but in the face of despair.

Her decision to live each day is a big Fuck You to MS, a big Fuck You to her fate.

She accepts her fate and rejects it at the same time.

That is why I call her the Goddess Jeannette.

Over the course of the past three years, I have dived into Jeannette’s life as a reporter, a voyeur, an investigator, a detective, a spy, an admiring friend. We have spent countless hours talking…on the phone, in upscale restaurants, at her dining room table. We attended a glittering, celebrity-studded MS event together in Los Angeles one year ago.

Just a year ago...but a lifetime ago. Before Coronavirus.

Nearly two years ago, with her adult son David, we revisited the heart of her childhood horror -- Letchworth Village – the now-abandoned NY State institution where her father served as an on-site doctor, consigning her to a childhood where abnormality was her normal. David had just learned the truth his mother had kept hidden from him and his brother. As we climbed through the haunted, abandoned buildings, the true shape of her childhood – the true dimensions of his mother’s character – became known to him.

Now here she is, facing another bit of improbable adversity, this time in good company.

“To tell you the truth, aside from the fear of infecting myself because I cannot wash my hands easily, my daily life has not changed under COVID-19,” she said to me in the first weeks of the pandemic.

Before the Accident, I told Jeannette that I wanted to write about the secret that she holds; the life hacks she can teach us to transcend this terrible moment.

Before the Accident, when I was possessed of the determination to overcome the adversity, I committed myself to serving as a megaphone, publicizing the secrets of survival known to many survivors of trauma.

And then I allowed myself to fall into the snake-pit of despair.

But that Monday, Jeannette threw me a lifeline.

“You are dealing with a holistic sense of threat,” she told me, after listening to me recount my experiences of the past two weeks. “You have lost your illusion of safety. Here’s the difference between us: I never had this illusion. I’ve lived under extreme threat my entire life.”

Jeannette named the amorphous monster that had overtaken my existence.

My new despair was a reaction the new and unwelcome sense of daily menace.  Most of us have no antibodies to threat. Born into the most secure and prosperous era of history for Americans, we have no reflexive ability to respond to the new normal.

Let’s be real. Before COVID-19 came to our shores, our lives have been a Hollywood rom-com, a day at Disneyland. Unless we have personally encountered death or devastating disease, unless we have experienced hunger or crushing poverty, unless we are survivors of violence or assault or war, we know nothing about surviving this present moment.

What we need to do is find the survivors among us – of the Holocaust, of adversity, of battle, of disease, of political unrest, of hunger, of neglect, of violence – and hear their stories. We need survivors to kick us in the butt, teach us how to shout a loud Fuck You to the adversity of the present moment.

The antidote to despair is the knowledge that the human spirit is resilient.

The antidote to despair is perspective, the knowledge that crisis has happened to humanity before. The extended period of comfort, ease and safety we experienced is actually an anomaly in the history of humankind. Disruption and crisis are the forces that have changed the course of human history.

We are now in a historic turning point whose trajectory – and meaning -- will only be revealed over time.

That Monday, my dear friend and collaborator Jeannette, survivor of an improbable number of traumas lifted me out of my despair by naming my new adversity – a pervasive sense of being under threat -- and reminding me that survival is embedded in our DNA.

My conversation with The Goddess Jeannette restored me to my warrior woman self.  Warriors know the importance of shouting when they confront an enemy and so, I have woken up each day since Monday shouting: “Fuck You COVID-19!” I am also shouting a big Fuck You to the corrupt clown-king occupying our White House and his administration and cronies.

It feels good to shout back in the face of threat. It feels good to be reminded of our capacity for fighting the good fight.

I never knew until the present moment that the archetypical struggle of Good vs. Evil was actually real. I thought Hollywood dreamed it up, didn't know it was ripped from real life. What we are understanding now is that our lives, Before Coronavirus were charmed. 

After my conversation with Jeannette that day, I returned to my apartment and promptly located the short essay she had written at the beginning of the pandemic, in response to a query from David Brooks of the New York Times. As it was not printed, I am presenting it here.

Read it once, then read it again.

Read it often.

You will need it.

I Have Been Here Before

By Jeannette Perutz Elsner

I have lived in some form of isolation my entire life. I am the child of Holocaust Survivors and when my father came to the States, he found work as a residential physician in various mental hospitals, including Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Letchworth Village and other "snake-pit"-like institutions of suffering and terror. It was on the premises of these houses of horror that my childhood unfolded. My formative years were characterized by a sense of quarantine, being locked away from normal life, imprisoned within a hellish alternate reality, subject to outrageous and traumatic events.

More than three decades ago, as a young mother in my early 30's, I awoke to find myself fully paralyzed. Thus began my personal plague: Multiple Sclerosis. While the paralysis eventually lifted, the tell-tale symptoms replaced them. Over the intervening years, as my illness progressed, I have felt alone and isolated, overwhelmed by the awareness that normalcy or even health is all illusion. Reality can change in a heartbeat. Everything is fluid; changeable, unreliable. We all live at the mercy of the moment.

Now, with the advent of this horrific global pandemic, we are united, seized by an invisible virus that has violently and abruptly broken our core illusion of emotional, physical , financial stability and safety.

For most of humanity, this experience is novel but for me, it is familiar.

I've been here. When you have MS, you live in lockdown, you are quarantined within yourself, isolated from humanity and the flow of daily life. 

As such, I believe I have some wisdom to impart right now. Here are some useful tips for survival amid brokenness:

Accustomed to being alone, I try to find emotional purpose in my physical and emotional isolation. Many mornings I am broken. My tears frighten me for wiping my tears with my imperfectly cleansed hands can prove deadly. I try to find connection with people and family, even at the risk of being met with the avoidance and impatience that many people have for candid conversation surrounding sickness. or hardship. With the entire world united in this perverse manner -- we are all victims of COVID-19, infected or not -- I find that the bonds of humanity sustain all of us. And paradoxically, ironically, I find myself oddly calm and confident, knowing that I already disabused myself of the illusion that any of us have control over our lives or fates. Strangely, I realize that those of us who live with suffering have an edge right now, a resilience. Used to being imprisoned within our bodies, we are strangely empowered with superhuman strength and purpose during this uncertain and terrifying time.

Talk to us. We will help you through. 

Trumpensschreckenswut

It was shortly after the bleach-injection/UV lung treatment idea unleashed by Donald "Mengele" Trump and slightly before I happened upon a Christian Trump supporter's Facebook page where prayers were being solicited for God's anointed one (who seemed to be suffering from a case of "loosened tongue") that I realized what I need -- what we all need -- to get through the double-plague of COVID-19 and 45. 

What we need, my friends, is one word that contains the amalgam of shock, horror, rage and fear we are experiencing as Americans at this moment when it appears that our president is literally TRYING to kill us.

(A measure of how horrifyingly sick this present moment is is the fact that I find myself wishing for a president who was merely incompetent...not incompetent and resentful, incompetent and narcissistic, incompetent and science-averse, incompetent and sociopathic, incompetent and racist, incompetent and homicidal.)

As English is disadvantaged by having a limited number of syllables permitted to individual words, I knew that this was likely to come from German, a language famous for words of impressive length that convey entire weltanschauungs (world views).

But who to consult in the dead of the New York night as I gnawed away at my cuticles, chewing Elderberry gummies (high in Zinc and vitamin C!) and counting the cans of tuna, cans of diced plum tomatoes, cartons of Oat Milk and boxes of lentil pasta on the floor of my office/emergency food storage locker?

It came to me in a brilliant flash. My oldest son, a culture writer living in Germany for the past 12 years was just greeting the Munich morning as I stared balefully out the window at an idling Mt. Sinai Ambulance parked on the corner of Amsterdam and W116th Street.

As one of his gigs, for the New York Times, entailed covering the German language theater scene in Europe I felt this was a reasonable ask. And even if he were not up for the task, his wife, my Italian daughter-in-law, was fluent in German as well. 

Perhaps their best credential was that THEY WERE AWAKE!

Through our WhatsApp call I conveyed what I was seeking. I did not have to give too much of a preamble, shorthanding the assignment as my search for the schadenfreude equivalent for this state of mind. 

Two brilliant minds went to work. I humbly suggested that the word end in "angst," which every American could relate to. There was a first version. That was amended. Angst was in it. Then angst was taken out. Angst, they explained, was implicit. 

Include his name or not? I thought not. They argued for specificity. 

Some more back and forth, some family gossip and then my daughter-in-law produced the word: Trumpensschreckenswut. If I could figure out how to place an umlaut over the u in Trump I would, so add your own if you can.

What does this mean? This word of twenty-one letters encapsulates this moment, names the unique and horrible psychological state we find ourselves in as American citizens being held hostage by the Mad King Donald.

It literally means Trumpish Horror/Rage. 

This word is a world unto itself. A terrible world, to be sure. A world with monsters, straight from our childhood nightmares.

The length of the word reflects the length of our quarantine, the interminable sentence of the Trump presidency, the endless ability to be shocked afresh, anew, every day, several times a day.

But being able to identify a free -floating threat is helpful. We named the thing. We know what it is. We can examine it. We can talk about it. Soon we can overcome it.

And the kinder were correct. There is no need to add the word "angst."

Angst is implicit.

Angst colors the dawn of every day that 45 is the American president during the crisis of COVID-19. 

There is a Make-Shift Morgue One Block Away...And Other True Tales of the 2020 Pandemic

1 a.m. April 22, 2020.

Week seven...or is it eight?... of the quarantine.

I am camped out in my home office, aka Emma's old room, aka Adam and Anna's guest room, aka the pandemic food storeroom.

I am here because it is where I feel safest right now.

As is my habit, I just spent about an hour reading the latest news reports...on CNN's live update feed...on Twitter...on Facebook...on NYTimes.com.

Others need to immerse themselves in escapist fare -- which I wholeheartedly salute, by the way -- but for me, staying informed is a way of staying sane, keeping control or equilibrium.

This is coming to you from Manhattan's Morningside Heights, from Amsterdam Avenue and W116th Street, to be exact. We live in faculty housing, opposite Columbia University.

Two blocks south is the former St. Lukes hospital, now Mt. Sinai West. To accommodate the number of dead, a makeshift morgue in the form of a refrigerated truck is camped out on W115th Street.

Columbia has always been our backyard, since we moved here in 1994.

Now it is our only yard, the sole stretch of outdoors where we feel safe to walk, aside from the grassy lawn in front of our bungalow up in Monroe, NY.

Until a month ago we were walking around the reservoir in Central Park, along the Hudson in Riverside Park or around the perimeter of Morningside Park.

As the virus spread, the crowds began to feel threatening. Even thinned out, there were too many people.

Because the campus is our only haven, which we walk with masks and sometimes even gloves, I have raised holy hell with the administration to ensure that people on campus comply with public health policies. For the space of an entire week, I sent pissy"Karen" emails to important individuals, prompting one of them to ask if I was "Mrs. Bollinger," that is, Columbia President Lee Bollinger's wife.

I must say that I stand by my letter, my pissy tone and actually do not think that I acted like a Karen, I acted more than an Erin...as in Erin Brockovich. What I wanted to know was: if Governor Cuomo AND Mayor deBlasio BOTH said that wearing masks in public is required...WHY WERE AT LEAST HALF THE PEOPLE ON CAMPUS WITHOUT MASKS, SMOKING, SOCIALIZING AND RUNNING SWIFTLY PAST ME, SENDING ME INTO A TAILSPIN OF FEAR???

It is amazing how many people truly do not think that a basic, commonsense public health policy applies to them...and I'm not even talking about the so-called "protesters," aka "Covidiots" waving guns around because they think their personal liberties have been taken away by a bunch of wussy scientists who are only trying to keep them alive.

I'm talking about some neighbors. I'm talking about security personnel at Columbia. I'm talking about the students staying in East Campus.

But I don't want to dwell on this. And I also want to say that I got a personal email today thanking me for my "tenacity," (YAY!) and assuring me that signs were going up on campus shortly informing everyone that it was mandatory to wear a mask.

I want to be more general, talk about the incredible disruption to normalcy, the lives spent indoors, the cessation of street life, night life, restaurant life, regular shopping life, the sirens, the 7 pm applause, the clever videos, the heartbreaking videos, the silly videos, the memes, the co-created concerts and benefits, the glimpse of celebrity's kitchens and backyards and basements, newscasters without make-up, none of us with neat hair or nails, weight gained or lost, food stockpiled, the fear of going hungry, the fear of not having, the uncertainty of what tomorrow will bring.

I want to talk about the fear, the despair, the anxiety, the flickering hope, replaced again by fear, despair, anxiety.

I want to talk about my awareness that as tough as this is personally for people like me, it is infinitely more horrible for others. If you have a roof over your head, money for food and are healthy, well, then...that is a Dayenu. You are one lucky bastard.

I want to talk about the heartbreaking deaths, how Facebook has been turned into a vertical obituary column, how people die alone, how people grieve alone, how Judaism's magnificent rituals have been constricted, how Purim turned into a death factory for so many, how so many rabbis have risen to the enormous challenge while others have failed their flock by worshipping the Golden Calf of disdain for truth and science. I want to talk about the shocking infection and death of our frontline medical personnel -- whom we call heroes when they are really being martyred, or maybe murdered -- about the stunning lack of preparedness in this nation, about critical supplies deliberately being withheld, about a president who has failed to say even ONE empathetic, unifying word,  about how America might be ending, or over or dying and we...the same.

Will we survive this?

I want to talk about my shock that we are hostages of an insane and evidently homicidal president (how did this happen that we cannot be guaranteed safety from our government????), my horror at the enablers who are still -- STILL -- propping him up, fueling his insanity.

I want to talk about the horror of this moment. The horror of listening to FoxNews when I visit my parents. The horror of Ivanka and Jared whom I hate more than I imagined I could hate people I do not personally know. The horror of governors who put wealth over health,  who lead their people to slaughter.

I want to talk about my rescue fantasies ala Deus ex Machina. Of Biblical justice meted out. The splitting of the Red Sea. A miracle.

I want to talk about my valiant friends who are alone. Truly alone. In their homes. What that is like. How it is different from being with others, even others you may not like.

I want to talk about my parents, ages 89 and 86, in their apartment in Great Neck, with two caregivers...and how terrifying it is to love someone so vulnerable during this time.

I want to talk about the deaths in the nursing homes, the bodies piled high, the terror of the administration at being discovered, families astonished and aghast and robbed of final hours and even truth and especially the dignity of a proper death for their loved ones.

I want to talk about the work I have been lucky to have. I want to talk about my adult children who bring me such joy and hope. Who are the sources of light in my life. Whom I miss...except for the one who lives with us, next to us, with his wife, with his music, with his wry observations and calm.

What a blessing.

And I want to say that one of the teachings of this terrible time is that love really does traverse distances. Love knows no bounds, no geography. It is here even when the person is not. I feel my children and my little grandson even though we are not together...just as I feel my sister, brother, parents and all my beloved friends.

This is my first foray at documenting this time aside from Facebook posts...of which there are many. It is late at night. Or early the next morning. Look, the new day has arrived. America is still here. We are still here.

Our story is not over yet.

Let's Make America Sing Again!

Coming soon to Kickstarter:

A campaign for my new multi-platform gonzo journalism project: I Hear America Singing, which will take me coast to coast in search of the song that resides at the heart of contemporary America.

Since Election Day, I have been visiting karaoke bars in New York City to hear people sing and speak about their hopes, dreams and fears in the aftermath of the recent presidential election.

Why karaoke bars? Because they are the new Town Square, that friendly place where people gather after work to connect, relax and express themselves through song.

At a time when words are being used as weapons in our newly-divided nation, the power of song is great and profound. It heals rifts. It unites. It expresses what cannot be conveyed through words alone.

It is said that a person's name is their destiny. My name is Shira, which means song in Hebrew, and my life has been influenced and enhanced by the sheer joy of singing...solo or in a group, in school, synagogue and summer camp, in times of joy and sadness alike.

Inspired by my love of singing, I am now continuing the journey I began in local karaoke bars and taking it on the road, coast to coast.

Built around that great American tradition -- the road trip -- I Hear America Singing is journalism of the people. It is unvarnished, gritty and real. It is democratic. It is journalism of the here and now, capturing this epic moment in our nation's history, documenting it and striving to make sense of it all.

Featuring interviews with regular Americans in a variety of cities and towns across this great nation, my intention is to head out on the road over the course of several cross-country trips within the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. 

While on each leg of my I Hear America Singing road trip, I will be visiting places with current social and political resonance, changing up the landscape, seeking to capture the widest possible sampling of incomes, professions, backgrounds, faiths and political leanings by visiting local karaoke bars, getting to know their patrons and documenting the local mood.

It is my hope to zigzag from "red" to "blue" America, making my journey as diverse as possible. Among locations I hope to visit are Charleston, SC; Flint, MI; Ferguson, MO; Indianapolis, IN; Atlantic City, NJ; San Bernadino, CA; Orlando, FL; Whitefish, MT and dozens of others cities marked by tragedy or fame; popular or forgotten.

  

The purpose of my Kickstarter campaign is to launch the pilot phase of the project.

How do I envision I Hear America Singing?

The essence of my project is an up-close-and-personal invitation to YOU to join me on my journey, which will be documented in real time. By reading my daily blog and Facebook page where compelling videos and photographs will be posted, you will be able to follow me as I leave the bubble of New York City in search of America. 

As additional funds are raised, a website and podcast will be added to the suite of products documenting my adventures.

Details on how you can support  I Hear America Singing will be available on the Kickstarter page. 

Now is the time to document America's hopes, dreams and fears through the songs of its soul in this uniquely 21^st Century journalism.

I hope you can help put me on the road in quest of America's resonant song, that which rises above the divisive rhetoric of our nation. I hope you can become a supporter of my multi-platform storytelling project, I Hear America Singing.