Our alarms were set for 4:15am, but Heidi and I were both awake prior to that, having experienced the inconsistent slumber that comes when you know you have to get up really early. By 4:00am we both rolled opposite directions in the bed, toward our phones at either side, checking for last-minute information.
Just a couple days prior Heidi and I had visited the Singapore Airlines office to move our tickets forward, arranging to depart for Guangzhou, China on March 27 rather than April 3. After originally intending to stay in Singapore for a few days, or a couple weeks at most, we were now nearing 2 months of waiting for circumstances surrounding COVID-19 to settle down so we could return to our work at an international school on the outskirts of Guangzhou.
As one of the school’s leaders, Heidi was particularly anxious to get back, to be present as plans and arrangements were made for the eventual return of students. I was fine traveling April 3, but certainly willing to go earlier.
In addition to the anxiety to be onsite to help with school arrangements, we had plenty of other anxieties. We had anxiety about quarantine, where it would be done and what it would look and taste like, and a suitcase filled with Red Vines, chocolate, peanut butter, and crackers to help us deal with that anxiety. I wasn’t sure how I would fare stuffed into a hotel room for 2 weeks, and Heidi wasn’t sure how she’d fare having to put up with me stuffed in a hotel room for that long. We bought a yoga mat so we could work off some of the confinement energy.
We had anxiety about travel, its safety and availability. The virus transmission wasn’t yet well-understood. Singapore Airlines had announced it was canceling 96% of all flights. That seemed unthinkable. The agent who bumped our tickets forward said to keep an eye on our emails, that virtually all flights were being canceled.
The U.S. Department of State issued an urgent notice advising Americans abroad to return with all haste, “while commercial transportation options were still available.” That sounded ominous. U.S. citizens like us who lived abroad were advised to return to our country of residence immediately. At the same time, the U.S. was evacuating nearly all its diplomats in China, leaving us without support there if needed.
Singapore felt relatively safe, but our jobs were in China. Our income was in China, and the school was making increasingly strong calls for the return of overseas staff – about half of whom were scattered around the globe. Our health insurance was in China, not an inconsequential factor in the midst of a pandemic. Of course, the medical system in China was still reeling from its COVID-19 stress, although things in Guangzhou were less critical than in Wuhan and some other places.
Our bags were packed. We were ready to go. This was our frame of mind as we woke and rolled toward our phones, groggy and unrested, looking for a last-minute flight cancelation, even half-expecting it because of the ticket agent’s warning and news reports about collapsing air travel.
We had no messages from the airline, but we did have a message from the school that rocked us: China was closing its international border at midnight, in 20 hours. Heidi and I stared at each other, faces pale with the horror-movie lighting of phone screens in a dark bedroom. What did that mean for us? What were the risks? What should we do?
The obvious answer was this: take our showers, grab our bags, and get to the airport. We would arrive in China 12 hours prior to the closure thanks to Heidi’s push to advance our departure by a week. Although anxious about what the closure might mean, Heidi was ready to move.
I was locked in “what if”? What if our flight was delayed or diverted, and we couldn’t get into China? Once gone from Singapore we would not be allowed to return, as they had closed their border to non-citizens. What if we got to China but were stuck in the immigration process – that now was reportedly taking many hours – and they closed? These were not rational concerns, but they were the accumulation of weeks of uncertainties and anxieties. I agreed to shower, head to the airport, continue to gather information and talk, and make a final decision before checking in for the flight.
But in the shower I broke; tears flowed down my cheeks as warm water rivered down my back. I gasped, “I can’t. I just can’t.” It became a mantra punctuated by sobs. In what was left of my rational brain I knew missing the flight burdened Heidi in her work and might even affect her career. I knew we’d be fine; we had plenty of travel experience to roll with whatever circumstances presented themselves over the next hours and days. We were going together. I tried several times to recover my sanity, to replace “I can’t” with “We can.”
I returned to the bedroom with a towel around my waist; Heidi was wrapping up charging cords and slipping electronics into her backpack. Once more I told myself it would be okay, but when Heidi looked up at me the tears came again. I pulled the towel to my face and sobbed, “I just can’t go,” naked inside and out. We sat beside each other on the bed in the room that had been our port from the storm for the past 7 weeks, talking quietly for a minute as Heidi sought to understand the situation in front of her, how I’d gone for a shower anxious but ready and returned collapsed and incapable. Then she said without reservation, “We’re a team. Whatever we do, we do together. We’re not going.” And in the midst of my relief a new hole opened up inside me for the choice I’d forced her to make, a hole I’d struggle to close for months following.