Heidi described those first weeks of the pandemic as a “slow burn” of anxiety. I had been experiencing them as a series of brushfires, any one of which could have been stamped out with no lasting damage. On that early morning when I stalled our return to China, one more brushfire – the news of China’s impeding border closure – merged with the others into an inferno I couldn’t control. The blaze overwhelmed me with its heat and smoke.
I often forget now how unsettling those early months were, how quickly circumstances evolved, how often expectations and plans had to change, how much physical and emotional energy all of that absorbed before we even began to deal with our “normal” obligations.
Many of us adapted to remote work, struggling with technology and procedure, while others continued in-person work at greater – and not yet well-understood – risks. Still others lost their employment and faced economic peril, with more or less social support depending on where they were located. We looked for toilet paper and tried to connect virtually with others as we remained physically separated.
In addition to these general experiences, Heidi and I attended to our personal list of disruptions, many of which centered around our son’s wedding. Rolling impositions of quarantines – itself a new and fairly novel idea for us – made us concerned about getting to the U.S. for the event, though on each occasion our school director assured us we could work remotely in order to attend, even when 6 weeks of quarantine seemed possible. After feeling queasy from riding that roller coaster several times, on March 18 the wedding was officially postponed; we booked tickets to China for April 3. A week later we moved those tickets forward to March 27 to get back earlier. Then we didn’t go. All this happened during the first two months of our pandemic.
Throughout our time in Singapore, and especially in the period following my pre-dawn crisis, our morning walks through Jurong Lake Gardens helped us sustain a minimum level of pandemic mental health.
Situated just one degree off the equator, Singapore’s sun rose each morning at about 7:00am and set each evening 12 hours later. Since Heidi and I left about 6:15am, many mornings we enjoyed spectacular sunrises across the lake at the center of the park, the dawn colors washing across the equatorial clouds and reflecting warmly off the water. As we explored various minor paths, we developed a routine based on the main sidewalk through the garden and some of its offshoots, which for us bred nicknames like “The Squigglies” (a meandering boardwalk over the lakefront) and “The Scrunchies” (a gravel path near The Squigglies).
Depending on time and weather, putting together preferred pieces and extensions of our route could lead to a 12,000 step, sweat-soaked beginning to our day. The sweat wasn’t primarily a result of rigorous exercise; we were just walking, though with definite purpose. But breathing alone could be a sweaty affair in Singapore, where Heidi generally soaked through two face masks during a walk, and she would often rate days by the number of bras needed, eg. “This was a two bra day,” or even in the extreme, a “three bra day.”
Our walks generally included a few monitor lizard sightings (some more than 5 feet long), as well as various birds. A rare day might contain monkey sightings, and the best days included rafts of otters skittering across the grass or gliding around and across each other through the lake.
Depending on mood, we mixed walking companionably together listening to separate books on our earbuds, and talking about the wedding, quarantines, recent Singapore restrictions, and the expiration of our visas there. We could discuss work and worries, friends and family, hopes and hazards. Following our aborted return to China, I agonized repeatedly over the decision I forced, and Heidi patiently repeated that we were in the game as a team. She deserved bonus points for hanging out with me when I was in self-flagellation mode. Still, that 90 minutes or so most mornings placed us into the day on firm ground individually and together.
Our daily walks provided a testament to the power of routine in the face of disorder, the role of exercise in managing stress, the significance of having some small choice (the ability to take a daily walk) in an environment offering few of them, and the importance of maintaining our relationship in the face of internal and external pressures. It also spoke to the privilege we had that any of this was possible: the time, the energy, the resources. We were constantly aware that others faced more with less.