From Here to There, Together

Last week I left one lockdown in Florence, spent the night in another in Amsterdam, and am now in another in Los Angeles.  

The feeling of traveling to be with family for Christmas is usually a familiar one.  

This time? 

There was little that was familiar about it.  

The virtually blank Departures board was different, the lack of lines for security was different, being the only one on the hotel shuttle bus was different, having the only option for food be take-out from the hotel restaurant was different. And maybe what felt like the biggest logistical difference was getting through passport control, customs and baggage claim to be driving north on the LA freeway in less than 50 minutes from when the plane touched down in LAX.  Unheard of.

The whole trip felt like it was only about moving a masked body from point A to point B.  

That’s all. 

I stayed distanced from others. I wondered why they were traveling but there weren’t those casual moments on offer to strike up a conversation with a stranger. I was lacking the urge to explore a place that is different from my own.  My curiosity felt limited to discerning where danger might be lurking. It occurred to me that this experience had me brushing up against - only in the most infinitesimal way - the perspective of travel that refugees might encounter, when getting to the destination is the one and only laser-focused concern. 

Lockdown in LA is a different animal than it is in Florence.  Rules have been declared in an effort to keep people safe, but unlike Florence, here in LA there isn’t any enforcing of those rules. No autocertificazione that declares why you’re out or a €400 fine for being in place you shouldn’t be. This means each individual, each family, must decide what the best course of action is to keep everyone safe.  The government isn’t really going to take care of that for you here - other than offer up some guidelines that you might choose to follow while others don’t.

Today, on the shortest day of this 2020, I’m just back from getting tested for COVID as a precaution. I had to slalom through a parking lot where, when I was a kid, I rode my bike, skateboarded, walked dogs and where I taught my kids to do the same when visiting from Italy. They had us zig-zagging our cars through orange cones and sawhorses on their sides, lined up as if we were waiting to get on an E-ticket* ride at Disneyland. The whole set up seemed pretty ad hoc. It looks like they found some old window frames and threw some plastic over them to protect the lovely young people who are working there. Through the car window, they handed me the plastic bag containing the swab by using one of those grabby poles that old people use to get stuff from high shelves. Then I drove forward til I saw a masked and shielded someone in a fluorescent yellow vest holding a sign that looks like it was made by a 6th grader. I watched as she pointed to each square, telling me to cough into my elbow, swab my cheeks and gums for 20 seconds, then put the swab into the test tube and the test tube back in the bag. I then drove on and dropped the bag in a bin that has seen better days. Results should be available on line in 24-48 hours. 

Those are the logistics.  

The bigger take-home, however, is that though the technology of the testing is advanced, the rest is just all of us cobbling this together in the best way we can, hoping we can all keep ourselves and others safe. 

Though we’re all being separate, somehow, doing it together makes me feel we are in this together and gives me hope for coming through it together.  

Together. 

That’s my word for Solstice 2020.

*In the early years, when you went to Disneyland, you got a coupon book with A through E coupons with which to “pay” for each ride you went on.  The best rides, like the Matterhorn or Pirates of the Caribbean, were “E ticket” rides and always had the longest lines.