Heliotropism: Turning Toward the Light

November 8, 2021 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

Ruminations of a COVID Thriver by Sallie H. Weissinger

I’ve just finished reading Mama’s Last Hug by Frans de Waal about primate behavior and what animal emotions tell us about ourselves. As a lover of animals, both domesticated pets and those non-domesticated ones in the serengeti, savannas, and forests, I resonated to his insights. I was struck by observations he made regarding animals including chimps, capuchin monkeys, bonobos, elephants, and birds, but also by a particular comment about plants: de Waal notes that brainless plants can exhibit complex “behavior.” He cites the example of the heliotropism of sunflowers – as the day progresses, sunflowers follow the sun across the sky. Then, during the night, they reorient to where the sun will come up in the east.

Bart and I, both in our eighth decade (he’s 78 and I’m 77), are beginning to look toward the sun again. At this stage in our ongoing COVID ordeal, I admit to experiencing survivor’s guilt. Many people in our country and in the almost two hundred countries across the globe have lost what’s dearest to them. But, along with the guilt, I also admit to being relieved that my husband and I have had a relatively easy time during the long viral sequestration. But we didn’t get off scot-free. We lost two people in our inner circle, longtime members of our extended family, to the virus. Both suffered from underlying conditions, and their deaths did not come as surprises. My closest friend died the month before the novel corona virus became an acknowledged killer. Nancy, my friend-sister since we were nineteen and in our first year of college, was bedridden in an assisted care facility, unable to breathe without an oxygen tank. Thank goodness I was able to be with her to the end. That would not have been the case had she died one month later. Two other close friends died during the lockdown, but not from the virus. We have yet to be able to mourn four of them formally.

If COVID has spared me thus far, I can’t say the same about life in general. I am on a first-name basis with loss. But, after a decade and a half of mourning following the deaths of my husband and my only child, I met Bart, an extraordinarily special man from Portland, Oregon. We met two years before the epidemic-turned-pandemic confined us into a small, solitary pod. He and I were both widowed, skeptical that there’d be another glorious relationship to follow. We fell in love within a month of meeting and marveled that butterflies can still emerge from not-so-shriveled cocoons, even in winter. The only non-serendipitous part of our adventure was distance – he lives 650 miles from the Bay Area, where I’ve been rooted for almost fifty years.

When we got married the year after we met, we agreed to a semi-commute marriage. I would maintain my Berkeley life of activities, volunteer work, and bonds with cherished girlfriends to talk and drink coffee with, walk with, discuss books and movies with, and laugh with. A second complication was that Bart and I both had dogs whose canine sibling rivalry and anger management issues undermined our hopes for peaceful co-existence. Finally, I was working on a book with my editor, who lived half an hour away. Bart and I made a pact: neither of us was willing to relocate full-time, but we were flexible about going back and forth. We’d be together most, but not all, of the time. We estimated our together time would be three weeks out of four each month, and we’d FaceTime, phone, and text each other during the remaining week apart.

COVID changed the best-laid plans. Less than a year after we were married in 2019, my two rescue dogs and I moved north to self-isolate with Bart and his German shepherd, whom I have nicknamed “White Fang.” We had no idea COVID would keep me in Portland for sixteen months in his more spacious house with a large yard (which I lack). I kept up with my California friends via email, phone, Zoom, and handwritten notes, but social distancing made it nearly impossible to make new friends in Oregon. I continued working on my book with my editor, thanks to the many digital options.

After months of being glued to my computer, with a view of a newly planted front yard from my freshly painted office, and with snoozing dogs nestled at my feet, I have finished my book, Yes, Again: (Mis)Adventures of a Wishful Thinker. The dandelion seeds on the book cover worked, blown into the air with a single breath, as the legend goes. My wishes have come true. After sanitizing and masking and distancing our way through COVID hell with health and good spirits intact, we are finally hooking up with Bart’s friends, and I’m making new ones. My dogs bounce with joy as we greet unmasked people on our street, people whose smiles we can see and return. We’re extending and accepting dinner invitations. We’re back at the gym on Tuesdays and Fridays.

My hope is that others, now or in time to come soon, will be able to resume a heliotropic life. It goes without saying that there are people who have lost too much: a spouse, a parent, a child, one or more friends, or perhaps their own health and livelihood. Their stories will not end on a warm note. But there will be individuals with the resilience, perseverance, and good fortune to reach a sunny place to redeem their losses, if only partially. I toast each one of them, with wine, with water, with whatever life-giving elixir quenches their thirst. And with the memory of the sunflower reaching its way toward the light.

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SALLIE H. WEISSINGER is a native of New Orleans and was raised as a military brat away from the South (Germany, New Mexico, Ohio, Japan, and Michigan). Every summer, she and her family returned to visit her mother’s relatives in New Orleans and her father’s family in a small Alabama town. She has lived most of her life in the Bay Area and also in New Orleans. These days, “home” includes not only New Orleans and Berkeley, but also Portland, Oregon, where she lives most of the time with her husband, Bart McMullan, a retired internal medicine doctor and health care executive, and their three dogs.

A retired executive herself, she now teaches Spanish and does medical interpreting for non-profit organizations in Central America and the Dominican Republic. Weissinger is a passionate member of the Berkeley Rotary Club and has served on the boards of Berkeley Rotary, the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, and the East Bay (formerly Oakland) SPCA. Find her online at Memoir | Yesagainmemoir.

YES, AGAIN: (MIS) ADVENTURES OF A WISHFUL THINKER, Sallie H. Weissinger

In this laughter-through-tears memoir, Sallie Weissinger, a late-in-life widow, recounts the highs and lows of navigating the tricky online dating world of the 2000s. Interwoven throughout her adventures in search of a new relationship are stories from her childhood as a military brat, her southern heritage, her various marriages, and the volunteer work in Central and South America that helped her keep moving forward through it all.

Weissinger keeps her sense of humor as she meets men who lie, men who try to extort money, and men with unsavory pasts. When she experiences even more loss, her search for a partner becomes less important, but—with the help of friends and dogs—she perseveres and, ultimately, develops her own approach to meeting “HIM.” Blending the deeply serious and the lighthearted, Yes Again shows us that good things happen when we open up our minds and hearts.

“A funny, touching, and ultimately uplifting story of a woman searching for love and purpose.”

—Kirkus Reviews

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