​I’ve already talked about my brain hemorrhages. I was in a coma for quite long until the neurosurgeon and his team could identify the origin and be able to attend to it. I was on a ventilator and a feeding tube for a while. As they have told me, the long wait and their inability to predict if I would live or die made my family and friends think of my potential loss and increased their concern for me. And when my friends who weren’t that close and synagogue members found out, the severity of my illness and its effects made them feel the need to support Eric and me.
All of these things brought about quality changes in my relationships, from the closest to the most distant. Acquaintances behaved as I would have expected from intimate friends. Neighborliness turned into warm relationship. And as others changed, I, too, changed – their different behavior stirred new feelings in me: I experienced what being cared for meant; people were there for Eric and me.
There’s something else that has changed in me, and that’s my attitude regarding other people’s past or present conduct toward me – my views have experienced a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.  I look at my feelings years ago, and they seem petty and self-centered, and I react in a completely different way. Because of this turn, I think of my injury as a watershed; I jokingly refer to my life history as “before March 23rd, 2018” and “after March 23rd, 2018.” I start reacting as my old self used to react, but I immediately tap myself on the shoulder.
I had distanced myself from an old, close friend because I’d decided, somewhat pettily, that she was behaving unfairly toward me. But since I’d inadvertently kept her as my WhatsApp contact, I sent her a happy birthday voice message. I got a very warm reply right away. In it, she expressed her affection and care for me. This reconnection brought the past back. I recalled my anger, but I also recalled the good times we’d had and our fondness for each other. And I wondered why I’d gotten mad and had decided to stop being in touch. I told myself that no matter my ambivalence toward her, I had no reason for keeping my distance.
There are many examples like this: many friends I illogically criticized, and many I lost solely because I (unreasonably) made the decision to part from them. My injury has caused a lot of damage, but it has also given me a lot of things, among them, a different perspective from where to look at things, a different perspective from where to look at myself. So, while I have reasons to be upset about it, I also have reasons to be grateful (although sometimes I have to remind myself of these).

​When COVID spread like fire in New York City, causing a lot of deaths, and the amount of new cases rose in New Rochelle, Cuomo imposed quarantine rules around the state. Additionally, despite its advantages – wide spaces, low-density buildings, and few commuters to the city – Beacon had enough cases to require strict rules. And people were scared! To people’s compliance with new rules, you have to add Eric’s and my fear of my catching the virus, as I tell in another chapter. The result was visits on the deck, keeping the right distance, and wearing masks. But then winter came. That did away with visits on the deck; the sun and the warmth vanished. Luckily, with the enforcement of the lockdown in most cities around the world, human ingenuity was spurred: new online platforms were developed, and all phone apps started to be used.
So, since our home became empty of visitors, I’ve started using my phone and computer much more often: every week, I have a video-call with my friend Ellen to chat and sing, and sometimes another friend from the synagogue joins us; on Saturday evenings, some of us get together on Zoom to sing Havdalah (and take the opportunity to catch up); on Tuesdays at 1:30 I have a weekly video-call with my cousin who lives in Britain (with whom I used to play when I was a child), and at 3:30, with a synagogue friend (she’s an example of the synagogue members who became friends about whom I write in another chapter); and every few months I talk on the phone with grad school friends who live too far away to visit (the epidemic has made it impossible to spend the night).
The last ones are “phone visits,” as my grandmother used to call her long phone conversations with her friends. Besides these, I talk every day through WhatsApp with my mother in Argentina, and almost every day with my brothers and sisters-in-law; I talk once a week with other close friends (an example of new friendships that deepened, which I mention in another chapter); we have a meeting with my brothers and their families and my mother on Zoom on someone’s birthday or to celebrate a holiday, be it Jewish or conventional; and we have an extended family meeting on Zoom (all of the cousins, their spouses,  and our parents) to celebrate holidays or just to meet and chat.
I have plenty of ways to share my life with friends and family: exchanging news, venting, singing, practicing Hebrew, seeing familiar faces, communicating often with friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I am closer to beloved people who can’t visit for various reasons, COVID and the quarantine among them. I have plenty of ways to keep friendships alive. So, although the house and deck are empty, I feel they’re always full.