Corona Diaries
Our Story
2020 has been core-rocking, each of us experiencing our own unique version of this story. I wanted to take a moment to capture ours.
After the boy’s school in Tokyo closed because of COVID-19 fears in late February, I quickly booked a flight for us to head home. The virus hadn’t hit the US yet in any real way and we were supposed to travel back for Spring Break anyways, so I thought we would jump start our vacation and in a few weeks, Steve would meet us as planned.
The boys and I arrived at my parents in North Carolina with relief and confusion as we passed through immigration with zero issues. We were then met with a sucker punch as we quickly realized what was about to happen to the world was anything other than fleeting. Our time at my parent’s house stretched from 2 weeks into a total of 2.5 months. While they were so welcoming and good with the boys, it was really, really, really hard not having my own space with my own rules. And even harder not having Steve to co-parent with. My chair had 3-legs. But 3-legs in a great neighborhood, with access to the outdoors and the gift of having my parents help, so I could have some moments to myself from time to time.
Then in early April the US Embassy warned us that if we didn’t return to Japan immediately, we wouldn’t be able to return indefinitely. All of our expat friends ran back to Japan. We would have too except for one big piece of the equation: this past winter Steve’s dad was diagnosed with stage-4 esophageal cancer and was told his time left with us was limited.
Steve and I made the call that instead of us coming back to Japan, he would come meet us in Kansas City, where his parents lived so we could spend precious time with his father. I quickly booked us an AirBnb for the summer and then needed to decide how Anders, Chase and I would get to Steve. I went back and forth and decided that instead of putting the boys at risk on a flight with a layover, I would map out an epic road-trip.
Enterprise came to my parent’s house to trade in my rental economy car for a minivan. After a full Clorox wipe down and an evening of airing out, we took off. I traveled alone with my 4 & 6-year-old boys during a pandemic from Chapel Hill to Asheville to Nashville to St. Louis to Kansas City over the course of 4 days. And we had a blast! We stayed in the coolest AirBnbs (that we made sure were empty prior), had a beautiful friend move out of her home so we could stay for the night without contact, ate the best food (that we had dropped at our front door) and became experts at peeing in nature - even though every time we did, the boys would laugh at me because I “pee like a dog.”
And by the grace of god, we made it. And Steve arrived. And I kept my distance from him for all of 5 minutes before I licked his face, collapsed into him and cried with relief. I stayed up with him forever that night. I missed him so much.
From there we fell into a routine. Every morning, I wake up with the boys, we adventure outside, come home for a swim, Steve wakes up around 3:00pm, and then we head to his parent’s house for dinner. We are home by 7:00pm where Steve jumps on his work calls and I tuck in the boys. Then I sit by his side at the kitchen table doing some old lady activity like paint by number or a 1000 piece puzzle, while he works. Then I go to bed without him, where I watch Til Tok til 2:00am. Finally, he comes into the bedroom to check in on me and tells me I REALLY need to go to sleep to make tomorrow a good day. Then he goes to bed around 6:00am snuggling into either my bed or Chase’s bed - depending on where Chase is. The weekends are similar except we stay a little later at his parents and we tuck in the boys together and then head out to our backyard for date night. We are creating real moments. It’s incredibly special.
What’s hard is that Steve’s sister also lives here with her 5 kids we all adore. In a normal world, we would “quarenteam” with them, but her husband is a doctor at the hospital and with Steve’s dad’s fragile state, we must be super prudent in keeping our distance. In fact, we have to be so incredibly careful about everything: groceries delivered, Target drive-up and oh how my kids would kill to play with some neighbors.
Yet, it is our normal. The days bleed into each other. Some are better than others. But the boys are really good, and I’m good, Steve too - as a family we are as resilient as ever. And as we look to the future, we have gotten strangely comfortable with the unknown. Not having a plan actually felt freeing.
But the thing is, summer doesn’t last forever. Steve can’t keep working nights. School will start in August. And in mid-June we finally heard back from immigration officials that the only way back into Japan is if we left for humanitarian reasons, one of which is to visit a relative who was in critical condition abroad - which applies to us. But we can’t get approval prior. We have to fly to Japan with translated doctor’s letters, translated letters from the boy’s school, birth certificates, marriage certificates, rental agreements and pray they let us in. We can easily be denied at the border. In addition, when we arrive we are tested for COVID-19. If we test negative, we travel home by private pre-arranged transportation to quarantine in our Tokyo apartment for 14-days. If we test positive, we are sent to a government hospital. Gulp.
So, we decided to stay for another month in order to spend more time with Steve’s dad and with the hope that Japan border control restrictions ease up a bit. But now with US cases spiking it is all so uncertain. Still, we have a flight “home” booked for August 1 with so much swirling in our heads. Somehow the unknown felt more comforting than our current plan.
In the meantime, each night we sit eating grilled yumminess on my in-laws porch and reminisce about old times. One of their favorite memories is visiting their beloved Lake Mattawa each year, around this time. It’s all the way in Massachusetts, but this lake cabin is such a Bertling family favorite - it’s even where Steve proposed to me. So we had a crazy idea: what if we rented a RV, placed Steve’s dad on the bed in the back and drove him there for one last hurrah? It was first brushed off as impossible, but after approval from his doctors, 12 days open sandwiched between chemo treatments and a trip to the Mayo Clinic and me finding the last available RV in America on July 4th week, we are about to make some magic happen.
Our goal is to create incredible memories and indulge in the everyday. Then when we return we will map out our next chapter. There is so much uncertainty in our future. What does goodbye to Steve’s dad look like? Should we depart for home earlier than August 1st? Will Japan let us back in? What if they let me and the boys in, but not Steve? If we can’t get back in, where do we go?
But for the next few weeks, my goal is to be present, enjoy the open road and have gratitude for the experience we are about to have. But, just for the record, when I said “Let’s Have An Adventure” - this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. xo
