9' x 12': Chapter 6 - An Ocean Between Us

March 2020

Early morning walk in the hills above Santa Barbara - Lockdown 2020

The sound of silence was the first sensation I felt, or rather an absence of noise. The contrails of a plane dashing white across the sky were rare, an eerie reminder of the days following 9/11, the morning chatter of kids walking past the house on the way to school evaporated, cars didn’t move for days on end. The regular ebb and flow of life subsided into a prolonged quiet akin to an endless, early Sunday morning when few are about and the town has yet to wake up. These were the first impressions of lockdown. That, and an almost palpable fear of the unknown.

As the days, then weeks wore on, the second, more pressing sensation, for me at least, was the sense of distance, that our world, once so small (hop on a plane and you could be on another continent in less than 24 hours) was now suddenly very, very large indeed. As part of a European family living in the US we have always had a transcontinental relationship with one another, but we knew, that in an emergency we were just a plane flight, albeit a long one, away. On one side, 5 hours going west to Hawaii towards my mother and brother, on the other 10-11 hours going east to France to my father and the huge French side of the family, with my small tribe based between them in California. Now there were oceans between us, literally and figuratively. The great expanse of the Pacific and Atlantic separating us with no way across, not even on a proverbial slow boat.

Looking out over the Pacific Ocean in the early days of lockdown, realizing just how enormous the planet really is. The storm clouds a portent of what was to come..

This abrupt separation, felt by millions of people around the world, was destabilizing. My mother, born during WWII, said it reminded her of the occupation, a sentiment I heard repeatedly by those who have suffered through the extreme trauma of wartime. There was no sense of when we would see each other again. Thankfully modern technology meant that we could at least communicate with one and other, a luxury that few in wartime had. Instead of sporadic letters we could call each other or facetime with our loved ones, but, and this was the crux of it all, we could not BE together. Humans need contact with other humans for we are a tribal lot. I never realized how much a hug from a friend, or an embrace from a parent could mean until I could no longer have it.