We Made It
We Made It
Relocating during a global pandemic
On November 2, 2020 my husband, daughter, and I landed in Tokyo, Japan. After much waiting, fretting, filling out forms, and taking COVID tests—we touched down in a foreign country after barely leaving our home for eight months.
I count March 14, 2020 as the beginning of pandemic life for us. It was the day we decided our daughter S— would not return to preschool, the point at which we began limiting our excursions, and the date I started a COVID diary. We had originally planned to move to Japan in April, settle in in the spring, attend the Olympics in the summer, prepare for our daughter to start a new school, and me to start work in the fall. Instead, a year that was meant to be full of newness and possibility turned into months of monotony and uncertainty, wondering when and if we could leave, when and if it was time to let go of this dream. And we were, unequivocally, fortunate. We were healthy, as were our loved ones. We had our home, and each other.
Everyone had burdens to bear in 2020, from the enormous ones of grief and loss, to smaller, but still significant ones like postponing a dream wedding or putting off a career change. I wrestled with my pre-pandemic choices, unable to see my future. I had left a tenure-track job at a college, one that I had worked hard for for seven years. We’d given up our daughter’s spot at the campus preschool. If we didn’t end up moving, what had it all been for? Would I have the energy to start again? Would there even be a job for me, now that college enrollments, particularly international ones, were in a free fall?
I often imagined how the weight of my worries would evaporate when and if we landed in Japan. The uncertainty would be behind us, and I could exhale. Of course, this was naive and I knew it. When the much-anticipated day finally arrived, after the flight and the many entry checkpoints, after we finally, finally entered the apartment I’d only seen in photographs—my body and brain teamed up to throw the largest panic attack I’d experienced since my post-partum days.
Traveling during COVID meant taking two PCR tests (each) in Seattle because we were afraid our results wouldn’t arrive within the requisite 72-hour window (they both did). Then, we had to take another COVID test upon landing in Tokyo. The entry test felt like a formality because we had already tested negative (twice!), and were very careful before, during, and after that process. But then! Our daughter’s results came back inconclusive—as did those of many of the other small children on our flight. Given that pattern, and the fact that my husband N— and I had both tested negative (again) on that arrival screening, we were as certain as we could be that S— didn’t have COVID, and that this was a testing error.
Still, I felt powerless in that moment, as I had left logic and level-headedness somewhere over the trans-Pacific crossing. This was not my country, not my language. If someone wanted to put us on a flight back to the US—repeating the ten-hour journey while exhausted, un-showered, and still masked—I couldn’t do anything about it. It was a helplessness I wouldn’t have felt at home. Home still felt safest in pandemic times, even if home was, statistically, one of the least safe places in which to reside. (And what a privilege it is to even feel safe at home. One of the core messages of the Black Lives Matter movement is that BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] do not and cannot feel safe in their own homes and communities. Just ask the family of Breonna Taylor.)
During the approximately five hours it took for our daughter’s swab to be tested and re-tested, we were, physically, just fine. There was plenty of room in the waiting area: a section of terminal space with high ceilings and walls of glass, rows upon rows of seating that would have been occupied Before, when people still traveled freely through the departure and arrival gates. S— had fallen asleep. There were large, clean restrooms, and airline employees brought us water and bentos. In other words, it was a temporary inconvenience that felt dire in the moment, when I was sleep-deprived and panicky.
The note affixed to our luggage, which we collected after our five-hour ordeal, declares we “must have been very tired by now in those recent situation.”
So when we were finally released from the airport, finally out of the private car we’d hired (in advance, per entry protocol), I was too wound up to appreciate the apartment, the conveniently placed rental furniture, the clean and comfy bed. We had to eat—it was past eight o’clock in the evening—yet even with UberEats I could not figure out how to input our new address, or what to order that a toddler would eat. (Confession: I ordered Wendy’s, and it almost went to the wrong address if not for the delivery person who texted me in flawless English.) It was all unfamiliar—but hadn’t I wanted new? I couldn’t sleep that night, panic radiating through my body as I wondered if I’d made a colossal mistake, if taking our daughter thousands of miles—I mean, kilometers—from everything familiar were a grave error.
But! I declared, “We Made It,” which implies positivity, and the act of getting through something, and me and my monkey mind made it through that first night. I exhaled. As of this writing, I do not regret the move, and S— seems to be thriving. She has friends, she has a routine, and she is going to preschool again. This makes me happy, even as I continue to struggle with my own place in the world. Since moving, I have met new people, traded a car for an eBike, and added swimming to my routine—little but enlivening differences. But much is the same: I’m still unemployed and living that pandemic life (sticking close to home, largely avoiding bars, restaurants, gatherings, and crowds) and am occupied with those mundane tasks of housekeeping—though they take much longer now, owing to unfamiliar appliances and brands, as well as the language barrier.
It’s 2021, and we—meaning you, the reader, and me—got through 2020, and that has some weight, even if life feels a little bit different, and mostly the same.
