Whiplash: From Chile to Covid

Two weeks ago today my family left on a plane to South America for a bucket list Spring break trip to Patagonia. We had a head full of adventurous dreams and a packed calendar to escape. We had heard a little bit about a coronavirus making its way through China, but there was no personal relevance for our daily lives.

While we were away, enjoying the incredible beauty of Chile, life, as we knew it at home, had drastically changed.

I cannot adequately describe how serene and calming our experience was at Tierra Patagonia. The breathtaking beauty of creation and the vast, natural landscapes surrounded us. There were no televisions in our hotel and we only checked in to WiFi twice a day, mostly to post photos. On Thursday I started to receive messages from worried friends at home. "When are you returning?" "Things are getting crazy here." "Did you hear they are closing some borders and canceling flights from certain countries?"

Checking social media, I started reading about grocery store shelves being picked clean and strangely, about toilet paper shortages.

Saturday we left a small, new and clean airport in Puerto Natales for a two-hour flight to Santiago. When we disembarked the plane there I started to feel hot and panicky. I cried twice as we stood in long, crowded lines for baggage check and security. People were wearing makeshift masks and warily eying one another for threatening symptoms. Every time someone coughed, a protectiveness welled up in me that made the stranger feel like a dangerous enemy poised to hurt my family.

The flight home was nine hours long and full of cruise ship passengers, many of them older. A woman behind me was coughing and it led me to cover my entire head and face with a blanket while I slept.

Our flight landed in Atlanta at 5:20 am, which meant Customs and Immigration was a fairly speedy process. We chatted with other Americans who were returning to the same new world. Our spirits were mostly jovial and resigned to face whatever was coming...and at that point, none of us could determine if this was an overreaction or a necessary way of living.

Our 90 minute drive home from the airport was calm. It was still dark outside. We were exhausted from our redeye flight. The radio was on a news channel and our driver, Jerry, tried to fill us in on how our community was being impacted.

We unpacked the car in the dark, leaving all the luggage outside. Each of us showered immediately and while I made a trip to the grocery store to restock our food supplies, Ryland set up a decontamination process in the laundry room while the children tried to sleep a bit.

My trip to Kroger was emotional whiplash. I was expecting it to be like a pre-snow day trip in the South...but instead, I felt afraid, sad and disoriented in a place that has been a regular part of my weekly routine for 16 years.

Although it was only 8am on a Sunday there were many shoppers and even more employees. Shelves were being actively restocked on every other aisle. The store was eerily quiet. Everyone seemed to be on a mission and processing in silence. A couple of times I started to make eye contact with another patron only to realize humanity might make me burst into tears.

With a cart full of two week's provisions, I thanked the shellshocked employees in the check out line and returned home to begin our self-quarantine on Sunday, March 15, 2020.