Memos from Quarantine #66: It's Good to Be Back

It had been more than two-and-a-half years.

Until this week, fall of 2019 was the last time I was on stage in New York City. Had I known at the time - had any of us been able to foresee the pandemic's seismic impact - I would have taken a lot more pictures.

There's no word, no phrase to describe the immense satisfaction of returning to NYC for our Northeast Cybersecurity Summit this past week. To greet old friends and to meet new ones, to shake hands with people you’ve only known through Zoom. To sit on stage for panel discussions, in boardrooms for roundtable meetings, in the studio for one-on-one video interviews - amazing.

I can't say everything old was new. Because we discussed software supply chain security, nation-state threats and zero trust security in a context we didn't have pre-pandemic. But there was a comforting familiarity to be back amidst community, and a welcome relief to never once have to say "You're muted" or "Your camera is off."

It’s good to be back.

?

It had been three weeks.

Standing on stage in NYC, I was keenly aware that it been exactly 21 days since I awoke and felt an immense exhaustion. At first, I thought I was just tired from the holiday weekend. But as the day went on, the exhaustion deepened, and it was compounded by a rising fever. I went to bed early that night, shivering, and I awoke early the next morning to the chilling test results: Yup, COVID.

Through hygiene, masking, quarantine, vaccines and boosters, I'd dodged the 'VID for 2.5 years. And just one week earlier, in London, I'd tested negative before flying home. But somewhere between London and Memorial Day, my luck expired.

Well, that's not entirely true. I was lucky to have a mild case. Yes, I mainly slept for a couple of days, and the virus robbed me of my voice for a couple more. But I had no lingering effects, and it really only cost me a day and a half of work.

The unkindest cut: COVID cost me the opportunity to attend RSA Conference 2022. The biggest global event in our industry - the Mardi Gras of cybersecurity - being held live for the first time in two years, and I had to keep myself out of the game.

I did what I could. I prepared my team with notes to support the 150 video interviews they conducted at RSA, and I helped mind the store while they were gone. But it took immense restraint to not say "Put me in coach; I'm healthy enough to play!" Yet, as tough as it was to stay quarantined for 10 days inside the old farmhouse at the edge of the hundred-acre wood - just me and the little black cat - it absolutely was the right call to make. As bad as I felt when I was ill, I would have felt tons worse if anyone else had become sick through contact with me.

It's good to be healthy again.

?

It had been more than a decade.

Back in 2009, long before I envisioned myself caretaking this 240-year-old farmhouse, a pair of sensitives made two visits to this property to give it a spiritual reading. Their experiences were thoroughly documented in the 2012 book Hauntings from Wayne and Beyond.

Now, I'm not here to validate their experiences. I can't; I wasn't present. I'm not here to push a paranormal agenda. Your beliefs are yours, and I just know that I'm fortunate to live in a home with a storied legacy and an amazingly serene energy. I've experienced nothing that goes bump in the night, but I'm inspired every day to work in the same office where Erskine Caldwell wrote Tobacco Road.

A month ago, these sensitives asked permission to revisit my property - to check in and see how things have settled. Of course I said yes, and their visit was scheduled for two days after I emerged from quarantine.

I won't share all the details - that's their story to tell. I will say they spent hours here with me. We walked and talked through every room on the first floor, second, in the attic and in the old dance hall in the barn. I saw or heard nothing, but the sensitives documented encounters with at least a half-dozen different spirits, including a Civil War soldier who is buried out back, a pair of playful children and Caldwell's first wife, Helen Caldwell Cushman, who lived in this house and kept it lively with family and festivities through most of the 20th century.

I knew Helen Cushman. She came to my elementary school when I was nine, weaving spellbinding tales as the self-styled Green Witch. And I actually first visited this house on a field trip when I was 11, and she was a guest lecturer at my school. Those experiences loom large in my life and in my decision to purchase this property. So it was gratifying to have the sensitives acknowledge the connection.

"We are all talking about how what a wonderful woman Helen Cushman must have been when suddenly, I feel a woman’s presence coming through," one of the sensitives documents. "She came through with an energy of being very happy. She had a message for Tom and wants him to know she is very pleased he bought her family home and that he wants to fix it up historically. You can feel her wonderful energy throughout the house if one really pays attention."

I'll share with you what I shared with the sensitives. Loose change is a recurring theme in this house. Ever since I moved in, it's been common to walk into a room, open a cupboard or pull open a drawer and find just a single coin - one that hadn't been there before, but now it is. Typically, an older coin not in popular circulation. But the house giveth and taketh, too. Just days before the sensitives visited, I'd set a handful of pocket change on a table in my dressing room, intending to put it in a change jar downstairs after I showered. When I returned from the bathroom, the coins were gone. I thought maybe my cat batted the change onto the floor, but I couldn't find a single coin. I just filed the experience under "Huh …?"

The sensitives referred to these experiences a "pennies from Heaven" - physical manifestations from spirits trying to send a kind message. I'm not saying this is so. I don't claim to have answers.

But I'll share this: The day after the sensitives visited, I was home alone (except for the black cat), and I suddenly found a single, shiny nickel sitting on my main staircase. I picked it up, and it was from 1999. I tossed it into my change jar, and as far as I know it's still there.

It’s good to have unanswered questions.