LONGING FOR CHANGE

I solve the NYT mini puzzle every morning. It’s a pleasant little test which lasts only a couple of minutes. The other day one clue was “Airport Boarding Area” and the correct answer, which I knew immediately, was “Gate.” Suddenly, I was filled with a longing for being at a gate, going somewhere. I thought of walking down the long airport corridors trailing my carry-on and felt a pang of loss. I REALLY miss traveling.

We have been cloistered inside our walls more than a year now, since March 14. Our home is a delightful, if not downright luxurious place in which to be confined – and we’re so lucky to be here, together - but the feeling of being ‘locked in’ is always present. This morning, as I crossed our patio, leading the dogs to do their morning ‘xixi,’ I looked up and was struck by the clear outline of the Dois Irmãos profiled against an intensely blue sky. The moment was so pleasurable, so harmonious that I stopped to raise my arms wide to breathe in deeply (accompanied by a fleeting thought that I should really give meditation another chance). Then I thought, “What was my life before isolation? What was my routine?” 

 

I’m just not sure anymore. It feels as if time has slowed down somehow. There’s no pressure or even necessity to do anything ‘right now’. One can stay longer in bed, dally after doing exercise, linger over meals, and generally fiddle around endlessly. The project that’s in your head can easily wait until tomorrow, as can the book you were reading, or the bread you planned to bake. It just doesn’t matter or make much of a difference. It is so tempting to give into this lassitude or feeling of being stuck in a vulnerable limbo.

 

It looks like I will get vaccinated at the beginning of next week. If all goes as planned, it’ll mean a 20-day wait for the antibodies from the first shot to form, then a wait for the second dose, and then another 20-day wait for those antibodies to appear. Two to three months more lived in caution, but after that – perhaps – relative freedom to move about and make decisions about our life outside the walls.

 

I suspect it will be a long time before I will fly anywhere, or even go to restaurants – the idea of eating furtively, masks at the ready, does not appeal to me.  But when I do feel safe enough, my dream is to spend a long lazy weekend at our happy place, a chalet at Vila Selvagem, a beach hotel on the coast of Ceará, walking on the long windy stretches of beach 

or lazing at the pool with a delicious caipivodka of local fruits and a dish of crunchy fried manioc wedges.

 

Ahh, then I will feel that I have gotten a little bit of my life back, and that, further along, I may regain more.