Travel encompasses both improvisation and grounding. Most of us need anchors – so we can take off on our journeys, improvise and explore and come back to something solid and dependable. Two days ago, I flew to New York City. There had been talk of the Coronavirus for a few weeks. When flying to Albuquerque for business in late February, the experience was surprisingly disconcerting. My seat mate in first class wiped down his entire seat, arm rest and seat back in front of him (asking me of course if I minded his venturing into my territory with the armrest, which surprisingly was comforting to me). I’d seen cleanliness freaks for years but he was a cut above. I noticed that the woman across the aisle wore a mask. I perceived an undefinable undercurrent everywhere – Charlotte, Dallas, Albuquerque. Fewer people were traveling, some wore plastic gloves, people kept to themselves. There was an edge about things. Of course, the reality of what was to come had not even dawned on me – in my mind or in millions of others.
I set out for my short nonstop flight to La Guardia and a New York City hotel with a new arsenal of tools – a dab of a dwindling stash of hand sanitizer, Ziplock bags tucked with Lysol wipes, two pairs of thin plastic gloves as protection against potential tactile threats. I was feeling quite smugly proud of myself and well-prepared. I prided myself on preparation. Once before I had traveled with an inner feeling of foreboding – not SARS or 9/11 but in the aftermath of a bout of vertigo. Still unsteady of my footing, I packed collapsible aluminum walking sticks for balance and actually used them across the icy snow of Manhattan and Hartford – to see my son at the federal courthouse off Madison Square Park be sworn in as an attorney and to negotiate the train to Hartford for a client. I’d never traveled with “assisted” navigation devices before, and I was remarkably physically insecure and frightened. For this latest trip to La Guardia, I was merely a bit cautious and feeling inconvenienced…
Manhattan was eerie, the large usually bustling hotel half full, Lexington Avenue half empty, the mood on a weekday workday almost still. Dread was building inside my gut – I worried about leaving my hotel room, then again I wondered if I was even safe inside it. By morning, I called my son. “It feels creepy, may I come out and stay with you all?” “Makes sense,” he responded, and I had no idea what level of awakening he was experiencing. I found a driver whose Lyft was super clean. She was a mother and mindful of the sanitation issues. Still, I was anticipating only “a few weeks of inconvenience.”
I wouldn’t have missed my granddaughter’s second birthday party. We stuffed balloons and packages into the car and drove to the toddlers gym. A tall stack of pizza boxes arrived. Then only 3 of the 20 invited guests showed up, and two of them had brought siblings. Happily the five children had a blast – they bounced on the trampoline, crawled through the tunnels, danced tentatively across the low-slung balance beam. We sang “happy birthday” and I captured a picture portrait of my happy little family. As we gave the staff cartons of leftover pizza, I kept thinking, “how rude of those other parents…why didn’t they show up??”
Two days later, my daughter-in-law made the same decision and apologetically declined the next birthday party for her close friend’s daughter. This time, we all agreed – we were wary of the growing fears about the virus – would it visit our house? Lockdown was on the horizon. I dialed up the same Lyft driver and flew home through La Guardia wearing gloves. The next day Manhattan shut down and everyone who was able to began working from home. We could not have imaged what would come (I resigned myself to possibly 2 months’ separation from them, 500 miles away). It’s been nearly 6 months.
It’s back to improvisation…this time, while grounded.
