Pandemic Paradise by Delis Pitt

Delis went to NYC for 6 months on her OE and ended up staying 35 years, teaching in Manhattan universities, especially The New School. Now she lives up-state with her Bronx-born husband and they spend  three months a year in their house in Thames.

Bob and I had tickets to return to upstate New York via San Francisco on the 29th of March, and I was already packing my carry-on bag with gifts, when my daughter Liz called, urging us to move our tickets up and come home right away. My reflex was to rush back to her immediately. But as the news became worse we were torn. I'm 71, my lungs are basically wrecked and Bob is 69. Then San Francisco went into lockdown and that was that.
 
We ordered a load of firewood and started stocking up on staples like coffee, Italian pasta, garlic, ginger, peppercorns, turmeric and fresh chillies. The day before lockdown here I went to the library, which was fairly plundered. A woman at the end of the row from me said, "My God, this is worse than Pak and Save!" When I checked out my books, the librarian said somewhat ominously, "Those aren't due till September?"
 
Every day we drove a little way up the coast road to Waiomu. For me, the drive up the coast and the swimming made me deeply happy, totally erasing any sense of being locked in. Our house in Thames is on a little hill, with lovely views to the Firth in front, and to the bush-covered hills in the back, so we never felt confined, but being at the beach is something else. Bob was always nervous that we were breaking the rules, but I convinced him that our bubble was totally secure. One of those gorgeous days early in lockdown, I was swimming at Waiomu, and the sea was totally calm, stretching out to what seemed like the curve of the earth, and I was immersed in that continuum, a transcendental moment, one of the unforgettable experiences of my life.
 
When swimming was forbidden, we reduced our beach trips to walking in front of the Thames Boating Club at Tararu, only five minutes from our house. Then one day Bob's worst fears were realised. There was a police roadblock at Kuranui Bay. As we pulled up and lowered the window, I hissed, "Let me do the talking" and explained that we lived above the high school and that all the streets around us were too steep for me to walk. I could have shown my inhaler but I didn't need to. The cop, who had his head right in the window without a mask, scandalising Bob, just smiled and said, "Sweet as!" So that day we went to Kuranui Bay.
 
We did a lot of gardening in lockdown. I painted all the old garden fences (trellis, what a pain in the butt!) and we ate well and read. I don't bake, but in lockdown I made soup, especially broth soups. Occasionally I felt like a mouse on a wheel, chopping vegetables, using the peels to make broth, then more veges for soup, more broth... Bob is a real hunter-gatherer, he loves buying food supplies for his family and felt rather shopping-deprived. Since he had read early on that the quinine in tonic water might be beneficial against Covid, he started buying gin on-line, and since the popular brands were sold out everywhere, he started ordering artisanal gin, and when there was a delay, he ordered different ones from different sources. So for a while there, every time the doorbell rang  we found another couple of exotic bottles, mostly New Zealand made. (We decided our all-time favourite is Lighthouse, and the tonic winner is Fevertree low calorie cucumber). It became a ritual, a 4pm gin and tonic outside in the sun, in the back at first, then as the sun moved round, in the front of the house.
 
But what about our life back home, our kids, our lovely cats, our house and garden, our friends? Liz and I talk all the time on the phone, infinitely more often than when we live five minutes from each other upstate. Bob's daughter and son call all the time, and his son sends wonderful videos of the two grandsons, one seven and the other almost two. I email friends constantly, and the crisis has inspired some old friends to get in touch. I am planning a post-Covid reunion here in Thames with my three kiwi friends from high school and I had a really great phone conversation with my sister in Western Australia, our first voice to voice contact in several years. On Mothers' Day, something that normally passes unremarked in our house, I got  a call from Liz, back home, and when the doorbell rang there was a woman with a huge gorgeous bunch of flowers.
 
We were having our 4pm ‘g and t’ one day, talking to a few neighbours at a social distance when the phone rang. Bob said hello, and then we all heard his daughter Eleanore demand, "What are you so fucking happy about?" Bob said cautiously, "We-ell, it's a beautiful day, we're sitting in the sun, overlooking the water, having our afternoon gin and tonic, talking to some neighbours..." And there you have it. In lockdown we were fucking happy.