How the History of Jetlag Balanced Life During COVID

As I study deeper into the realms of jetlag,

I realize that ignoring or not knowing much about history has a negative effect on how I respond to life’s situations. I feel a lag in the speed of knowledge and I result in creating my own reasons as to why things are happening. Worse yet, I buy into the ones others want me to believe. As Winston Churchill said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

But I have been studying the history of jetlag for the past seven years and so when COVID hit, I was not doomed to fall into a minor response that it would be only a problem in the short term. For once, I was not jetlagged on the subject.

About two years ago, the schools emailed us and said our kids would be sent home for about two weeks while they dealt with COVID. My son had a friend who in January was being held in a Chinese hospital and unable to return to the states because she had contracted COVID during her visit. I remember the timing well because as parents, we were trying to decipher if we should be worried that she had been admitted back into school too soon. We trusted our public school district and our kids were safe. But I remembered the connectivity that occurred that morning of 9/11 in the early 2000’s. What was going on with COVID felt the same. I knew this shift was massive. I knew that I was no longer a by-stander as I was during 9/11. Like everyone in the world, I had become a victim.

One of the characters in our book, Sarah Krasnoff is a Jewish immigrant from Russia. Her only crime the first newspaper headlines read, was that she loved her grandson too much. To make sense of her storyline, I needed to understand her life in Russia. Had her family always lived there, why would she have moved to America? I needed to understand her environmental, societal, social and emotional experiences that made her kidnap her grandson and travel nonstop intercontinentally with him for four months. A trip that led to her eventual demise.

Prior to COVID, I began this journey of research and I traveled to Ellis Island, a place many immigrants wanting to leave their homeland never reached due to illness from the extensive and crowded travel aboard massive transportation ships.I researched ship manifests and read a series of JSTOR articles about the Russian Pogroms and Revolution.

The pogroms were Russia’s response to Jewish success. The Russians took over Jewish territory. As Russian czar’s fell from power and the newly acquired Jewish immigrants began moneylending and grain trading, the Russian’s blamed their struggles with a loss of control and inability to maintain food production on the Jewish people. According to a 1982 article in the Slavonic and East European Review, 35million Russians were effected by the famine of 1891-92 and 13million citizens were placed on government aid from the famine. Someone needed to be blamed. Propaganda against Jews was spread first. Then the Jewish people were forced to live in squalor, in pogroms. All because the Jewish people had diversified their skills and were prepared to respond whether the economy was good or bad.

I had to synthesize my knowledge to two sentences. I realized that it took Russia five years to recover from the famine because their country export product was not diversified. Farmers all grew the same things. I took this information and looked at COVID and what happened during 9/11. The difference being that COVID affected every aspect of how our entire system functioned. Much the way an economic dissolution would occur in my own family if my only source of income was eliminated. Because of this comparison, I knew that my life was changing for years, not a few months. COVID affected how we as a world interacted, worked, behaved, thought. ate, slept, learned and parented. Life experiences have a way of changing us. Dramatic ones cause a rebirth.

Writing an historic non-fiction where the character is deceased, genetically unrelated and all relatives who would be able to talk on her behalf are deceased or unwilling to comment takes sleuthing and comparative thought. My first step was to rely on government records. Of which, I could not find many. The transition from one country to the next for an immigrant was not the most fact filled. People were escaping persecution or what they perceived to be a corrupt nation. Facts were not forthright because people were scared. Ages were fudged. Health status was and financial independence were the resounding characteristics everyone tested.

Upon arrival, to the steamship, names, the one and final connective tissue to the motherland were obliterated by the immigrants, not Ellis Island officials. According to numerous accounts as researched by Phillip Sutton of Milstein Division of United States History, the Immigrant Inspectors accepted the names as recorded on the ship manifest. A document that did not require proof, just consistency of story from ship embarkment to arrival in America. The inspectors’ jobs were to confirm that the name listed on the manifest of the ship matched the immigrant standing in front of them. The confirmation of which was certified through translators at Ellis Island. The inspectors of Ellis Island were more human than many of us believed in the past.

There was one documented account written about by Leonard Lyons in his entertainment column in the Washington Post in 1944 where an assistant concert master was encouraged to simplify his name because it was too complicated. A means of protection to the family. Another account according to Sutton was of a woman whose name changed from female to male because her appearance was so masculine that it was easier for her to find work as a man than as a woman. An ability to live comfortably amongst others, to make money and to not complicate the existing systems were the factors of concern. The admitting officers understood that preservation of life was important. A new name could offer a surviving chance. A fresh slate to wipeout the ills of the past. The only knowledge was perhaps a photograph and the memories inside ones’ head.

Because of this, I began conducting, what I define as parallel research. Through this research, I was able to determine the most likely path of my character, the most infamous yet loved sufferer of jet lag, Sarah Krasnoff. I dove deep, and what came up was a simplistic and sensical explanation of how and why.

As I struggle to get myself back in the swing of a more external life after COVID, I am amazed how this parallel research has helped me in other areas of my existence. Feeling jetlagged due to a lack of information is no way to be. It creates anger, mistrust and sets a destructive and hateful trajectory into motion. For leaders to create an environment where citizens do not know the truth may be a great way to maintain control. But for me, I’d rather trust the signs, admit to error and calculate the arc of reality from intersections that I know occurred.

So, was knowing that COVID was going to be a long-haul situation, that would not be remedied in a few months difficult, you ask? Not really. It was much easier for me to live on a steady path. The longer duration had adopting to the change as more permanent early on. My journey minimized unmet expectations and a constant series of disappointments. Coping for the longterm meant I was pleasantly surprised when life became more normal. Now, as we approach the endemic level of the pandemic, I am prepared for more twists and turns over the next few years as COVID continues to travel the globe and we begin to adapt more widely as a result of our experiences.