Looks Like We Made It. 2020 in Review

Birds gotta (get to) fly

Odd for me to resort to Barry Manilow lyrics in my title. But this time they fit. We made it. Through 2020. 

Or at least most of us are lucky enough to say so. 

This may seem late for a Year in Review blog, but we all know the New Year really started on Jan. 20th 2021.

It was a bad year for travel writers. I have reported my two small getaways to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Seeing the ocean in Delaware was a true delight, because the ocean always delivers. Despite Burt Lancaster’s famous line in the movie Atlantic City—“you should have seen the Atlantic Ocean back then.” Shepherdstown was just filler, like adding bread crumbs to a meat loaf, a desperate attempt to make a vacation about nothing, a la Seinfeld. 

Zooming my life away

The travel year seems starker somehow with the knowledge of what could have been. Vienna in May with a side trip to Prague or Budapest for our 40th wedding anniversary. A business trip to Amsterdam in July. A further celebration in Tucson with friends we’ve known those 40 years. Maine in late summer. I thought about driving to Maine, but they didn’t want those of us with Maryland plates in their state. Nor did New York City, a travel staple each year. 

Speaking of Maryland, we are 36th in the country in terms of vaccine delivery. High in levels of education, and health care, but low in pandemic management. 

From the redwood forests (2019)

I haven’t seen my delightful son Franky for more than a year now. He’s in Berkeley, enjoying the cornucopia of nature's delights in the Bay Area and the great Northwest. Hiking, biking, cliff diving, camping on the beach in Oregon. But enough already, enough absence. Can’t we bundle ourselves or him up in a beekeeper’s costume and fly across the country? I am tired of the abundance of caution. Then again, I am able to say I made it. 

Peter and Nila came for the holidays

We have been able to see Peter, who lives in “nearby” Brooklyn, a few times. He has driven home for both Thanksgiving, which we enjoyed masked and at separate tables, and Christmas. 

Both of the boys have turned the tables and are now more worried about us getting COVID than we are about them. When did this happen? Weird. 

Frank Beiser

We lost one of our greatest family members, and one of the greatest people of all time, Frank Beiser, this year. And because of COVID, we couldn’t do what we needed to do most, get the whole Beiser family together to cry and laugh and tell stories. We had to have a Zoom memorial. But his nephew and namesake, Franky Beiser, flew in and well represented us there. 

Frank and namesake Franky

Jane keeping up the glam

I spent a great deal of time in Northern Virginia this year with my dear friend Jane Winter who was rather abruptly told she had lymphoma instead of hernias on September 1st. Since then we have been on the cancer train, as she calls it. I became the conductor of the train, going with her to every medical appointment, every test, every chemo session (six in total), and one jarring trip to our hairdresser to get her head shaved. Our surprisingly amusing account of this journey is chronicled on Caring Bridge Jane’s Medical Diary, and in her Instagram account @flwjane. She won all sorts of cancer awards in my book—best attitude, biggest support group, fewest side effects from chemo. That was a journey I felt fortunate to go on and was able to go on thanks to COVID. Plus, the best news, it’s a journey that has come to an end. 

Bald eagle

Darr spent much time chronicling the lives of our feathered friends with his fabulous photography. From the soaring bald eagle to the diving cormorant he lifted everyone’s spirits with images of 2020’s only true frequent flyers @hbeiser, https://www.facebook.com/hdarr

Gruesome year. My friend Watson Jordan asked me and Jane to write a chapter in soon-to-be published collection of essays on resilience. Because that’s what it took to get through 2020. 

And when it comes to the merry life of traveling and travel writing, to quote another heinous character, “I’ll Be Back.”

Diving cormorant