Alas, COVID-19

By March 2020, the world began to change. What started as distant headlines became real, and the countdown to Bogotá turned into the countdown to lockdown. My lease was already over; my apartment was empty. Most of my things were in storage. I kept waiting for an update that travel would reopen, but instead every day brought another closure. Flights were canceled. Borders shut. March 22 came and went. Then March 30. I had nowhere to live.

My mom had already told me, “If it doesn’t work out, just come here.” So I did.
On March 31, I packed three bags and a small box and took an Uber to her house in Ellenville. That’s how the pandemic began for me — not in my city, but in her small town, surrounded by cats and quiet.

The first weeks were strange and claustrophobic. I went from a Financial District studio with a view of the river to a small bedroom off the side of my mom’s room — a child’s space, really, with a full-size bed and a window that looked out at the woods. She did everything to make me feel welcome. I was grateful, but I still felt like I was living someone else’s life.

We baked. Or more precisely she baked and I enjoyed the fruits of her labor. We watched Tiger King. and daily updates on the news. I watched the professional world overuse terms like "unchartered waters" and "unprecedented times". Linkedin surged with announcements of remote office work, layoffs and the advent of full remote work. My quasi-investors formally pulled out which meant the assistance I was going to receive on website creation and product design would now be up to me only. 

The first grocery trips were  oddly terrifying — gloves, masks, distance. Slowly we found our rhythm - our conversations and closeness reached new heights. We had always been very close - but we somehow found an even closer bond during those months. We talked about old painful memories that she wanted to take accountability for, she shared some of the more interesting elements of her roaring 20s I hadn't known before and learned a lot more about parts of her life I was there for, but not aware due to my age. 

There was one day I remember I was suffocating from the boxed up routine and decided to head to the local highschool and just walk on the track field with music on. I was shocked at how badly my health had gotten with just months of being sedentary - in lieu of the sweatpants we'd been wearing all the time, I changed into jeans and they barely fit. As I reached the sixth block of 11 from the track field, I could feel myself getting exhausted. By the time I got there I was already panting.  I tried to find the best rhythm that included routine for she and I and my personal space and giving her hers and within a few months we found it. 

Around that same time, George Floyd was murdered, and the world woke up in grief and rage. Watching my mom evolve through that was profound. She’d always said she wasn’t racist — that she “saw no color” — but now she began examining what that really meant. Every morning she’d watch educators on YouTube, take notes, and argue with people in comment sections until I told her to stop reading them. She called herself out on things from her past and wanted to be better. It made me proud of her. She was learning, unlearning, trying. I did have to stop her from emailing a Black student she hadn't spoken to in 48 years who she one made fun of - explaining how the phases of realization often include this - but that it would be better to write this in a journal. 

We found comfort in rituals. We swapped shows — she introduced me to Manifest, The Goldbergs and Cold Case; I showed her Parks and Recreation, The 3% and American Gods. We laughed more. We became companions in the isolation. And somehow, in all that stillness, I worked harder than I ever had.