A good friend of mine died last week from Covid, the first fatality I’ve faced during the Pandemic. She was a member of the alternative healing community here in New Mexico that has long disavowed doctors and their medications, preferring to rely on hands-on methods—massage, balancing—herbs and essential oils. I share some of their distrust of western medicine and have often been helped, when dealing with minor problems, by their methods.
Yet I was shocked when I found as she lay dying in the hospital that she was unvaccinated. None of her friends knew this. So my sadness is complicated by anger. How can anyone deeply involved in the welfare of the people around her have exposed us? And this is not the only example—more will turn up as the pandemic and its confusions continue.
I have learned in dark times to turn to a few trusted resources. First of all, my reading, which is both passionate and eclectic. This winter I am finally diving deep into the works of my long-admired Virginia Woolf. I’ve just finished her astonishing novel, The Voyage Out, where the forces of women’s ignorance through lack of formal education but, even more important, through the silence that reigned over any topic considered troublesome or scandalous in the early years of the last century caused the death of the central figure, a young girl whose “vagueness” about life exposes her to illness.
Now I’m reading Hermione Lee’s masterful biography of Woolf whose life early and late was marked by tragedy. Lee explains her experience of these “shocks”—early deaths, suicides, madness—as the source of Wool’s greatest pleasure: making wholeness out of shocks, which she called “the greatest pleasure known to men”—or women. It was the root of her writing.
And then there are the details of my blessed life here in Northern New Mexico as I mark my thirtieth winter here: my now seven-year-old rescue dog, the handsome and benign Pit Bull Pit who has often graced these pages; the Amaryllis on my kitchen window, bursting out like a hallelujah; and yesterday, Carol Boss’ “Women’s Focus” so reliably on KUNM here every Saturday at noon. The topic today was winter and comfort food, and adding these items to my grocery list was surprisingly reassuring:
Kale
Seaweed
Red Miso
Garlic
Any color beans, soaked with the seaweed…
I’m looking forward to supper.
Sallie, Perhaps those close to your friend are not vaccinated either !
A cooking question: 1) why soak dried beans in seaweed?
Thank you for Virginia Woolf mention – Genius, of course.