October 28 2020

 19 minutes a day.

Given that this is the first post I guess I should set some context. Hi, I'm Lisa and I'll be writing shit here for 19 minutes every day. Sometimes I may talk about the pandemic and existential fear, sometimes I may talk about the ghost that showed up in my dream with a blond mustache. I'm not sure what my purpose or direction is yet but perhaps we'll all find it along the way. 

Where were you when the pandemic began?

That's probably going to be a popular question when we all get older. I never thought I'd live through a pandemic. I had some false sense of security believing that we were past those days. "Only old-timey people had to deal with that crap" my brain would assure me. 

My brain was wrong. A truly rare thing I do say.

I was in Serbia when it started. My husband and I had a weird year and while still riding out some heartache and uncertainty we decided to spend 6 months in Serbia. After all, we were technically homeless, jobless, and our paltry collection of belongings was in storage. On November 17, the one year anniversary of our marriage, we packed 3 seasons worth of clothes, grabbed our little dog, and flew over the seas and shores until we landed in the Balkan belly of Europe. 

We had spent 3 months there the previous winter when our uprooting of life began. His parents owned a tiny apartment in the little city of Novi Sad. A charming old town with picturesque streets and 50 cent loaves of the most delicious bread you'd ever taste.

We had planned to spend the winter in Novi Sad then embark on some epic European adventures once spring melted the sadness away. 

I remember the first news reports of a virus. It was December and there were reports of an outbreak in China of pneumonia-like illness from an unknown source. We compared it to SARS in our minds. A virus that was surely a nuisance but otherwise had no direct impact on our lives. 

By January the spread had continued and there were even reports of deaths. News reports continually pointed to an animal market as the source of the virus. I remember googling animal markets.

The table we had in our tiny Serbian apartment was small and round with a table cloth over it and a doily in the center. We would make Serbian coffee every morning and talk about the news. "Is this virus a problem?" we'd ask each other. "Nah", we'd assure ourselves. 

Toward the end of January, there was news that Wuhan had been locked down. "Ok, great, that's that" we thought. The news coverage now included all of the insanely strict measures enforced on people in Wuhan I remember watching a video of a woman who was locked in her building scale down the side for a moment of freedom and a sprint down the street. "Geez, unrelatable" I thought. 

"The virus is spreading" I said one morning. Leon looked at me, searching my face for an indication of whether he should be scared. I wanted to convey some emotion, either reassurance or panic, but the truth was I had no idea how to feel. I was tentatively numb. "Nobody comes here at least" I said, reflecting on the rather quiet tourism industry in Novi Sad. "But Belgrade and Budapest" he said, reflecting at the tourism hotspots we had as neighbors. "Shit" I whispered. 

On January 30, 2020, we got up like any other day, sleepily made our coffee, and sat at the small round table with the checkered table cloth. "It's a global health emergency now" I read aloud to my husband. "What does that even mean?" he asked. 

"I don't know I'm reading it now". 

I tore through the article, searching for an answer on whether it was time to panic. Wondering whether now was the time to allow the walls to close in on me, to scream from the rooftop, to swallow existential dread.

"Oh, ok, the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern". That didn't sound so bad. They didn't want us to panic, just to be concerned.