#all these pandemic birthdays though have just flown by like I don’t really remember my late 20s when i think about it rn

[miralparis]

ahhh 🫣

[ofasleepvisits]

I’m not where you left me at all

Sometime in late February 2020 I coughed in my boss’s boss’s office and he jokingly asked if I’d been to Italy.

March started and we were aware of growing coronavirus concerns, but we thought life would still be normal.

Everything in our lives revolved around final preparations for our once in a lifetime trip to Spain.

Saturday March 7th

It was the second to last soccer weekend of the season. Our kids would not be attending the final games on the 14th because we would be flying to London the night before. Lyla’s coach told her to have fun in Spain and thought nothing of any chances of us not going. There was talk of coronavirus among the parents, but no one was noticeably concerned. One parent said something to me about it being like the flu so obviously we should still take our trip. The media was probably blowing things out of proportion to hurt Trump. 

That evening when the trip was finally imminent, we sat down to make final arrangements. Mindy is a planner and didn’t like that we had so many details left unaccounted for. We had the big stuff done months ago...

5 plane tickets on Norwegian Air, MCO to LGW Friday night to Saturday morning, LGW to BCN Monday morning, BCN to MCO (connecting through LGW) on the following Monday

The Hilton at near LGW for the weekend, even opting for that first Friday night though we wouldn’t be there until the morning so we wouldn’t have to wait until Saturday evening to check in

The AirBnB in Eixample in Barcelona from Monday to Sunday, the hotel by the airport for Sunday night so we could go straight there after the game, already packed in ready for our flight

And of course the 5 tickets to Camp Nou to see FC Barcelona and Messi play

...but nothing else planned. So that evening, we booked a black cab in London to take us to see the sights. I think coronavirus was on our minds, so we’d stay away from crowds. That would be for Sunday the 15th. We booked all sorts of little things around Barcelona too, the zoo, some museums, some parks, and other sights for our week there.

Sunday March 8th

I checked the weather and realized I needed some warmer clothes so I went to the mall and spent about $200 at the gap on button-up shirts and sweaters. We had bought the kids new sneakers the weekend before I think. Mindy said she’d buy some clothes the next day.

Monday March 9th

I went to work like a normal day. Came home like a normal day.

After dinner you left to go clothes shopping and I read about soccer. Champions League games were scheduled the next two days. Things were getting worse in Spain in terms of the coronavirus. There was talk of playing games behind closed doors, i.e. without fans in attendance. It sounded crazy. Mindy came home around 9p with her new clothes. I told her there was a chance of us not being able to go to the Barcelona game, the whole reason for our trip. We would know more tomorrow I said.

For the first time we talked seriously about not doing our trip.

Tuesday March 10th

I checked online first thing in the morning and it was official, the next two La Liga games would be played behind closed doors. We decided not to do our trip.

Did the heartbreak change me? Maybe

I went to work and told my boss and she seemed surprised. She said she and her family was still planning on doing their NYC trip for spring break.

FC Barcelona sent a nice email about refunds for our tickets being processed within 30 days and that felt good. Norwegian Air and Airbnb weren’t budging for now.

Wednesday March 11th

A potential vendor came to our offices to pitch my boss and me on a product I now forget what it was. He was from France and I remember shaking his hand and thinking to myself, like, maybe I shouldn’t be shaking his hand.

That was my birthday and I’d recorded the Liverpool vs Athletico Madrid Champions League game from the afternoon to watch in the evening. It’d be the last major soccer game with fans in 2020. It was fun to see Liverpool lose. A week later the game would be blamed for spreading since all the Spanish people had flown to England. Months later I don’t think anyone seriously thought that made a difference.

The president spoke that night. He talked of banning travel. We watched selfishly hoping that something he would say would help us get our money back. At this point whatever was going on in the world very much felt like something that was happening to us specifically. I was regaling coworkers with stories of misfortune about a trip of a lifetime canceled.

It was either this night or the next day that I posted on Facebook about how our trip was canceled and we may not get our money back but our family was happy and healthy and that’s what was important and whatever other trite pseudo-optimism works on social media to get supportive comments from distant family and various acquaintances.

Thursday March 12th

We got called into a conference room at work around lunch time or maybe just after lunchtime, 20 or 30 of us shoved into a conference room meant for 15 people, and told that we would be working from home until the end of the month. We could start tomorrow if we wanted. Or we could come tomorrow to gather some things then start working from home on Monday. There were some questions of whether you had to. If I recall correctly, the answer was you didn’t have to work from home if you didn’t want to, you could come to the office during the second half of March. But I may be misremembering.

But that doesn’t matter because by the end of the day we learned via email the policy was tightened to, don’t even come to the office tomorrow. Work from home starts Friday March 13th. No one come to the office until April. My boss wouldn’t be doing that NYC trip.

Friday March 13th

The day was a mix between work and dealing with the Norwegian Air. They kept hanging up on us. They refused to acknowledge the pandemic and how it would be reckless for a family to travel. Our Airbnb host was saying the same thing everything is great in Barcelona, you should still come she said via email.

One final phone call with Norwegian Air around 8p, I think our flight was a few hours later, the rep was like, what’s the problem, flight to Gatwick looks to be on time. How could you in good faith send a family on that flight? Click.

Don't show up, don't come out Don't start caring about me now Walk away, you know how Don't start caring about me now

Disputed the charge with Amex. Posted to Norwegian Air’s LinkedIn. Mindy found the CEO email address and send a message. Something worked, a few days later we got our money back. A few weeks later we got our Airbnb money back. One by one, Mindy got us all our sight seeing money we spent that weekend before the trip back.

Ironically FC Barcelona was the last to refund us because the March games ended up not being played behind closed doors but rather were “postponed,” I guess under the auspice of if they played them in summer with fans we’d be expected to attend. Didn’t matter, the rescheduled games in summer were without fans and we got refunded.

The next week

We made our best of spring break. Tried to recreate our weekend in London with food: Ale House seemed to offer the best fish and chips. Restaurants were weird. Lockdown and quarantine were sort of haphazard, masks weren’t a thing yet. By the middle of the week, everything was closing. We made “paella” and had sangria to recreate Spain. We played Barcelona’s scheduled Champions League game vs. Napoli on FIFA on the Xbox. Work started getting crazy so I really couldn’t take a legitimate week off.

The rest of the year

Eventually the pandemic went on, it quickly no longer felt like something that was just happening to us. Plenty of people had their trips of a lifetime canceled. And much worse, there were job losses and school closings. So we considered ourselves the lucky ones.

Though it took some time to survive you I'm better on the other side

And we really were and are the lucky ones. There were and are millions of people all over the world stuck at home by themselves, the whole world disrupted. Beside that missed trip and the pain of virtual school and the adjustment to working from home, our life has been fine. We just haven’t experienced the pandemic as acutely as so many people.

On a random Tuesday night, the five of us sit down for dinner. Our kids make us laugh. And we realize we are spending time with the people we most want to be with in the entire world. In ten or twenty years we would pay untold sums of money to have what we have for free right now.