A woman on Instagram in the U.S. wrote she was feeling homesick. All she’d done is sit down at a café on the same block where she lived.
I’m planning a trip south in April but struggle to imagine myself at the train station, much less inside a train. It’s been five months since I’ve been outside Coimbra’s city limits. Weeks since I’ve been at a café, months since being inside one. I suggested in my last post that we might be subject to a new form of agoraphobia. Most of us American ex-pats came here planning extensive European travel, but with much of the continent either still shut down or going back under lockdown, we are asking ourselves when – even if – we will be up to facing the planes and trains and hotels of Rome or London or Prague.
It’s been fifteen months since I’ve seen my sons, but, unless there’s an emergency, I won’t go until I have a vaccine. At the same time, I’m very aware of how out of practice I am wrestling international airport crowds, layovers, cramped cabins.
My ancestors made the dangerous ocean crossing from the Netherlands in the 17- and 1800’s. Once here, they stayed put in their small farming communities. Growing up among them, I knew many of my aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins had never been much more than a hundred miles from the towns of their birth. One aunt didn’t ride an escalator until she was in her 50’s. Living in New York State, they’d never been to New York City. Still haven’t.
I’m far more sympathetic after this last year of confinement. All that space out there. All those people. All that’s unknown. Beyond the state line? The town line? What does it matter? We have everything we need right here, and all we can deal with. Births, deaths, illnesses, joy, marriages, meals, money, laugher. I get it. I understand. I’m sorry I ever thought them silly. Or cowardly.
A part of me is exhausted striving to be upbeat while wondering if and when everything will be okay. The waiting, the worry, the setbacks. Covid coming far too close to my family. Watching the numbers rise and fall and rise again. Lockdown after lockdown. At the moment, we can’t travel between towns. We are, however, happy that coffee and juice and small items are, as of last week, “venda no postigo” – literally sold through a peephole, meaning by way of small windows in shop fronts.
I am very aware my situation is privileged compared to that of so many others. I’ve spent the pandemic inside the ease and safety of a cocoon, with a solid safety net of friends. We have all longed for reopening, but the truth is, the closer it gets, the more disconcerting the day the cocoon can be unwrapped. How many of us will choose not to?
Perfectly put. I can relate all too well.
We have to stick together!
In February I took a road trip from Florida to Chicago to visit my son after I had my first vaccine dose and he had antibodies. I love to drive and travel, yet I, too, felt the trepidation after months of isolation. Mile by mile, state by state, the fear began its own journey back toward joy and excitement. Fear was alleviated, but didn’t disappear. But I can feel the light at the end of this tunnel, and if we take it a little at a time, after MORE time is taken to ensure the whole world is getting the necessary vaccines, we can start to rebuild our outside confidence. Step by step. We will get there!
Beautifully put, Marsha. I feel something of a magnetic push pull in the process of emerging.
I approach post pandemic with trepidation. The strengths required to endure isolation are not the strengths required to engage with the world. Alienation has set in for many of us. Agoraphobia has become understandable to those untouched by it before. It is almost like Huxley’s iconic phrase, “Brave New World.” You have captured these shifting landscapes.
You are very kind. I suspect this disconnect will follow us for a long time. Lack of face-to-face conversation, lack of touch, only having seen half faces behind masks for months. I’m not fond of the phrase “to process,” but I admit it will take a long time to process all this.
Hi Eve,
Funny, I have been thinking of you the past few days, remembering our wonderful classes and our lunches with Margarita, Galia and Rich (? – my memory is failing me) at Dunvilles. And here you are with a very thought-provoking essay. I, too, have wondered how many of us are going to suffer some form of agoraphobia after this year of isolation. I was very nervous about Covid, but I went to Florida in Dec and stayed for a month. It was actually one of the best decisions I’ve made. I felt so much more relaxed in the sun and warm weather. I realized sometimes I have to take a chance in order to be happy. I hope your upcoming trip south is just as rewarding.
So nice to hear from you, Madeline. I often think of our classes — and wish we could reconvene. We learned so much from each other. And shared so much laughter. I do expect to adjust to the outside world, but I’m aware of the new calculations it takes as we try to absorb what, exactly, we have been through this last year.
“Cocooned” mirrors the thoughts of many of us. But I know I look forward to getting out, spending time with friends in addition to meeting new people, new communities. Like you, I have thought about times past, when travel wasn’t easy or even desirable, and people, like your relatives, stayed in one place for generations. I live in a 260-year-old farmhouse and have often wondered, even pre-pandemic, how anyone was able to make it up the very steep hill to the nearest store with a horse and wagon. Talk about being stuck in the valley! So in a way, this year of social distancing and staying at home has replicated those past times and given us a sense of what life used to be like before human beings started to swarm all over the place like a hive of angry wasps. As a writer, spending a lot of time by myself is what I do anyway but now I fully appreciate how important friendship and travel are, for both my mental health and my creativity. Have a great trip south!
I think this has been on many of our minds. I remember last year when we were in lock down the first time and we or at least I, was being more restrained in venturing outside than I have been this time around. I remember going out for the first time when the restrictions were eased and had the feeling perhaps of one recently released from prison, stepping into freedom for the first time in an eternity. It was if the sunlight was a little too bright, the air, a little too clear. I think you have tapped here, something that has been on many of our minds… what will it be like to return to normal life? Will we be able to return to normal life? Interesting too as you wrote in your piece, the fact that only in modern times did most of the population begin to venture beyonod the borders of their concelho. Once it was customary for people to be born, live and die without ever venturing beyond the boundaries of their place of birth. To describe this as a new kind of agoraphobia I think really touches upon an inner anxiety some of us have after being confined for so long.