The Lockdown Ache

For a long time now, my dad and I have been having what we call “the conversation.” It has changed in form over the decades as we’ve grown older and become more geographically distanced from one another. He’s in Upstate New York these days. I’m in Central America. But “the conversation” continues uninterrupted, adapting as the world alters its shape around us. We call it “the conversation,” because it has always felt like one continuous, unitary exchange of emotions and ideas. It is not a thousand different chats, but a single, lifelong, slowly moving, seamless ebb-and-flow of thought, love, and respect. Throughout a very blessed life, it is one of the greatest treasures. Perhaps the greatest, bar none. And thankfully, it continues as we move from winter to the first stages of spring in this very difficult year.

Of late, the conversation has been taking place via email. We write to one another several times a week with our observations of the world. And in this Monday’s missive, he said something that I have wrestled with since. I feel it. I understand it. But it also doesn’t quite sit right with me.

He wrote, “In this moment of threat and uncertainty, the direction is to isolate ourselves, one from the other. After 9/11, the goal was to gather together in our routine activities.”

In one sense, that’s clearly true. He’s there. I’m here. You’re where you are. Everyone who you love is where they are. We are apart, yes. That is “the direction” — the order from the lords of common sense and the government — but is it the direction of the heart?

Again, I’ve been wrestling with it.

In September of 2001, I lived with my parents in New York City. I worked in Brooklyn, teaching high school out in Bensonhurst. At the time, my dad was the president of a healthcare think tank with an office in the Empire State Building. My mom, a retired nurse, volunteered at a local hospital and designed jewelry that she sculpted and forged in her own shop in the living room. Which is cool as hell. My mom has an anvil. Awesome, right???

Anyway, on the day of the terrorist attack, I was at work out in Brooklyn, having literally driven past The Towers an hour before on my commute to school. When I heard about the second plane, I realized in that instant — along with everyone else — that this wasn’t an accident. My mind quickly went to what would logically be target number-three: The Empire State Building.

I fell into a panic and rushed to the phone in my Assistant Principal’s office, but she was speaking to her husband who was at that time trying to get the hell out of Tribeca and avoid the chaos quickly metastasizing throughout the city.

When she saw that I was clearly in a state, she cupped the receiver in her hand and asked with her eyes what was happening. I told her about my dad in the Empire State Building, and she told her husband that they’d speak again soon. Then she got out of my way.

I dialed the number, scared to death that he wouldn’t get the evacuation order in time, and when his answering service went to voicemail, my world went dark and cold.

“You have reached Jim Tallon at the United Hospital Fund. I’m away from my desk right now, but . . .”

Terror. Absolute terror.

He was fine, as it turns out. And of course he didn’t need me to tell him to get out of building. When I called, he was already walking down the stairs, along with everyone else. When he got to the street, he tried to reach my mom on her cell, but she was on the A-Train underground, heading to a jewelry-design class, so he couldn’t get through. As such, he had his own moments of private terror, too, I’m sure. But in the end, they both made it back to the apartment later that afternoon. They were able to have at least that small but powerful flood of love of returning to your partner’s arms.

On the other hand, I was stuck out in Brooklyn for days.

The bridges were out. The tunnels were closed. If you were going to move between boroughs, you’d have to walk. And so I stayed with my girlfriend for a night. Then I moved to the apartment of my best friend for two more. As such, I got to feel something very early on that ended up defining that time period for so many of us. I got to feel the ache.

The ache is that cavernous emotion that wants to be filled with all that is good, easy, truthful, beautiful and light. It’s the deep well of self and humanity into which we pour our promises to be better, to love more, and to no longer do harm to a single living thing. It is, in many ways, the godliest part of us. Or rather, it is the part of us that reminds us of our personal responsibility to be godly. It’s the part of us that knows we need one another to be whole.

When I finally did get back to Manhattan (on September 14), I remember with an impressionist’s artful clarity how my mother’s face looked when our eyes again met. She was filled with anguish, relief and tears. I could tell she’d been aching, too. I also remember how good it felt — a goodness that went all the way to my cells — to drop my bag in the hallway, and to fall into my father’s arms. He held me like he used to when I was three years old, an embrace that was the perfect balance of support and protection.

After dinner that night, I sat with him on the couch and put my head on his knee. I was a thirty-five year old man, leaning into the shelter of his sixty-year-old frame. As the surreal news of that week played out on the News Hour, he scratched the back of my neck like I was still his little boy — and all my aches were eased. For all the horror of those days, that’s what I think of most. I think about the ache I felt to see those I loved, and the sense of ease of spirit that came with finally being able to touch them again.

So what I’ve come to believe on day six of this lockdown — as I communicate with so many of you online, as I read the posts that are anguishing, as I watch the songs that are beautiful, and read your poetry which is poignant — I see some real hope and some real similarities to what happened back then.

In a way, my dad is right. We are distanced from one another. But in another way he’s wrong.

The conditions are altered, sure. We are being kept from some of the people we love the most in the world. I’m being kept from my parents right now. The country where I live has suspended all flights, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to return to my mom and dad, my brothers back up north. And I know that’s the same with many of you. But like it was right after the Towers fell, it’s not the separation in the end that will define us. It is the ache to connect that will.

So what I’m going to do until I can get back home again, is this: I’m gonna cultivate my ache. I’m gonna harvest from it as many beautiful words as I can. I’m gonna teach myself how to bank the embers of the ache, so that they will keep me warm while I sleep.

I’m also gonna share my ache with those few who are around me, including my best friend who is right now sitting on the couch to my right, scritching our dogo’s ears. I’ll do that by looking at her without speaking, drinking in the beauty of her silent, distracted form. Then when I ask her if she’d like a cup of tea, and she looks up from her book, I’ll try to radiate into her all the ache to connect with life that I’m feeling back into her eyes. And if I see her smile, I’ll know that for a moment at least, I’ve succeeded.

Then I’m gonna remember that she aches too. I’m gonna remember that she’s worried about her mom and dad, her grandma, her brothers and sister, just as much as I am. And I’m going to offer her my shoulder when she needs it, because that’s what best friends do. And I’m going to remember that hers is there for me, too, when it all seems too damn much, because I’m stronger when I bend, and so are you.

By the end of all this, by the time the virus is gone, and we can all go outside again, my goal is to know my ache better than I ever have before.

Here’s what I know about it already:

What I ache for — and what I’m guessing you ache for, too — is for everyone to just be okay. I ache for your family to be reunited. I ache for you to get back to the people you love. I ache for you to walk outside, and take someone’s hand just because you can, and ask them how they’re doing. I ache for you to walk through the front door of your apartment and see your mom as her face lights up in the incongruous beauty of pain relieved. I ache for you to cuddle up to your dad, or to your son, and feel the simple pleasure of fingertips on skin. I ache for none of you to get sick, and for none of the people you love to get sick. And if you or they get sick, I will ache for you until you have recovered.

I ache for that for all of you. And I know that you ache for that for me, too. It’s human.

And our aches will be relieved.

The bridges and tunnels are out right now, that’s all. But they will be back in service soon. Maybe not “days” soon. Maybe not even “weeks” soon. But soon.

We can do this. I know we can.

So for now, lean into the ache. Lean into it, so that you learn how deep and powerful it is.

What will define us, I think, when all this is done, won’t be the pandemic. No more than Osama got to define who were were back then. Not if we’ve taken the opportunity to reflect on how it is the ache that makes us human. None of us are whole when we are separated from the main. We exist to be close to one another and when we are not, we ache a beautiful ache.

Now, as I turn my ears to the quiet Antigua night, I reflect that the night wherever you are, is likely silent, too. Even if you’re in San Francisco, or Paris, or Manhattan, or where my mom and dad are right now in Upstate New York, your silence is likely much the same as mine. Maybe out there in the quiet, you too can hear the cricket legs rubbing in the dark, or two distant dogs barking at the moon.

If so, then reflect that those crickets and those dogs — just like the silent hearts of people you love who are sitteng at computer screens right now — are calling out their ache to one another, too.

Listen . . .

It’s beautiful.

Goodnight, and love to you all.