"The world is like a sleeping tiger. We tend to live our lives on its back. We're much smaller than the tiger; we're like Barbies and Kens on the back of the tiger. Now and again that tiger wakes up and that is terrifying. Sometimes it wakes up and someone we love dies, or someone breaks our heart, or there's a pandemic. But this is far from the first time this tiger has come awake. He/she has been doing it since the beginning of time and will never stop doing it. And always, there have been writers to observe it, and later, make some sort of sense of it - or at least bear witness to it. It's good for the world, for a writer to bear witness to it and it's good for the writer too - especially if she can bear witness with love and humor, and despite it all, some fondness for the world." -George Saunders
The Denver Airport lulled in its dim grayness, in its own hesitant hush. It was so quiet, barren, bleak. The drab sound of the somber baggage-conveyor-belt persisted; it cycled slowly, behind the slumped airline attendant. Families clustered together quietly at self-check-in kiosks. They spoke in near whispers about their boarding passes and they slapped stickered-luggage-tags onto checked-bags. College kids, with lanyards draped over their stooped necks, waited patiently in queues, usually a cautious six-feet-away from the person in front of them. They scrolled tiredly through their Instagram feeds, which then flooded with melancholic “goodbye semester” posts. They texted dramatic “see you next year” messages to their out-of-state-friends and they anxiously pondered what life at home would be like for the next indefinite amount of time.
I was at the Denver Airport on March 16: about five days after my college called off campus-life for the next month, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was at the gloomy post-apocalyptic airport, hauling my overstuffed 50lb suitcase across freshly-washed tiles, and slouched from the weight of my backpack, which was crammed with reading material. I had prepared for Spring Break.. as well as the next month of online-classes at home.. and the month after that.. and maybe the summer. Hell, who knew how long it would be?
Luckily, I didn’t have to pack in a hurry, like the millions of college kids who had to in the last week (including all the students studying abroad.) My March 16 ticket out of Denver gave me a cushion of time on campus to sort things out. I had time to pack up my apartment into plastic bins (which are now sitting idly in my abandoned home in Colorado.) I had time to return library books, to move my bike into storage, and to wrap things up at work. I had time to process the sudden changes. And I had time to savor my last moments of junior year, with my roommates, all cozied up in our campus-bubble of comfort. I was lucky. And I knew that; especially as I stood in the Denver Airport, checking into my flight for Raleigh, North Carolina.
That night on March 16, I traveled to Raleigh, rather than traveling home to Minneapolis. After days of contemplation, I made the decision to follow through with my original Spring Break plans. I flew to North Carolina to spend the week with my boyfriend, Deming.
I knew that I was lucky. I knew many college couples who were separated immediately and unexpectedly forced into long-distance-relationships within hours of hearing the news about campus closure. There were couples who confronted coming-out to parents, in order to bring partners home. There were couples who planned relocation together so as to savor the last few months before graduation. And there were couples, just as there were people, no matter the relationship status, who had no idea where they would end up in the world.
So, I knew that I was lucky to fly to Raleigh to see Deming. I also knew that my travels posed risks—of either contaminating or contracting something myself. I weighed my risks, reassessed my lack of symptoms, counted my recent contacts, and took and continuously exercised my precautions. By that point, Deming’s family wanted me to come, and I wanted to go. So, I went. And though the purpose of this blog post is not to justify my traveling so early during the nation’s exposure, I do want to assert that my Spring Break plans were, and were required to be, thoroughly considered during this 2020 pandemic.
With all that said, I am so, madly grateful to have spent that week in Raleigh. I not only savored each sweet and silly moment with Deming, but I also relished my role in this historical episode. Raleigh, in its 2020 spring-green bloom, was not only a new city to me, but was also an entirely new universe to all the North Carolinians. Downtown streets echoing with emptiness. NC State students nearly all evacuated. Cook Out drive-thrus bustling with bored families, picking up milkshakes for their day’s outing.
The trip was a vastly unconventional way for me to experience a new place – with the whole city shut down and with isolation tactics in place – but I suppose that’s why I’m writing this blog. I write because I like to reflect on what I’ve seen and felt from this world, during specific vignettes of time. Now, I write to reflect on what I have seen from this country, during a vignette of time that will be remembered by the world forever. I will remember it this way:
· The trees stand as if they have stiff spines. They stand closely, just not quite touching, in deep green, swaying forests, along the freeway in Raleigh. They’re lanky and lean, like.. the boys on the high school cross country team. They’re gathered like the cross-country team too: huddled gently.. and listening, as if they hold secrets.
· Deming’s home smells fresh, feels clean. I place my shoes perfectly parallel to the others, at the door, in the mudroom. I sterilize my luggage with Clorox wipes before anything else: rubbing its handles, scrubbing its base. I leave all my airport clothes on the floor of the laundry room – I do not touch anything until I have showered.
· Every morning, Deming’s bedroom fills with the cheery chirps of a thousand birds. It’s as if they flutter at the window waiting for him to wake up: it’s as if he’s Cinderella. And he acts like he is – giving thanks to his little friends for their natural alarm, softly smiling at me to say, “I love birds!”
· The porch is freckled with fluffy, yellow pollen. We sweep it up and enjoy breakfast fruit at midday. We get to sleep in.
· Raleigh is rolling. I experience how hilly the city is, as we bike through Deming’s neighborhood. I breathe the humid oxygen deeply, panting, sweating a slight pond into the small of my back. I push onto pedals at each rising mound; let wheels whizz below me at each downhill. It’s up and down, here and there, as if I’m the belly-sledding bird in the rolling-hills game of Tiny Wings.
· The neighborhood is a gorgeous haven: the type of neighborhood I remember in story-books: green lawns and picket fences, colored with crayons in my childish imagination. The neighborhood is a pocket of sunshine. Picture-perfect residents escape their quarantine with long walks at mid-day. Smiling parents stroll on the sidewalks, with tricycle toddlers trailing behind. Glistening runners stride past, their pony-tails bobbing to the beat of AirPod-streamed playlists. Deming and I zoom onward, up and down, blissfully on our bikes.
· The North Carolina Museum of Art, “The NCMA”, reminds me of Minneapolis’ Sculpture Garden. We can’t go inside the museum, but we unload our bikes in the sunny parking lot and survey the outdoor space. It’s busy, alive. Carried by our bikes, we swerve through art installations, couples on picnic blankets, kids with a high-flying kites. We bike past moms, who sip iced tea under umbrellas and dads, who rub creamy sunscreen on their children’s pink limbs. We bike through the woods, across a brown metal bridge, and a runner yells “please, single-file!” at us and I can’t tell if it’s because she requests 6-feet of social distancing or if it’s because she generally wants more space/order on the path.
· Downtown is quiet.. from the inside of Deming’s car. I close my eyes and imagine the city as if it were loud. I snatch at the sights of colonial-looking spires and chapels, dispersed between glass office-buildings. We sit in the lot outside of Deming’s favorite coffee shop, which is dark, closed. He tells me about it; I stare at its vacancy. He says that we’ll have to come back again when everything opens, whenever that is.
· The dirt trail through the bird sanctuary is also quiet, but quiet in its true sense. We whisper and pad along the crusty path, holding pinkies. Deming gasps at the sight of a painted turtled, bobbing in the creek. He hands me his binoculars – I can’t figure out how to use them. We giggle, alone, in the woods. Sitting on a bench at a curve in the trail, we tell each other how happy we are to be together during this time. “Together”, to me, is interpreted both ways.
· The TV flashes with pandemic updates every evening, in the kitchen, at dinner. I engage in nervous conversation about the state of the nation with Deming’s parents. Weeks before, I was nervous about meeting his parents for the first time, under traditional circumstances. Yet, here we were, getting acquainted with each other over meals made from ingredients purchased in paranoia. We occasionally talk over CNN’s coverage of COVID-19 cases.
· The basement brings me comfort at night. We cuddle in beanbags and burst with laughter over PS2 games and Guitar Hero. We sip on white wine and reflect on the past few weeks, arms draped over each other. I ignore the glass doors in the room, which reverberate with the darkness of the rest of the world, and I focus on Deming – who, I have discovered, is the heart of Raleigh.
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