Lockdown, Vol 2

The disappointment is acute.  

A few days after announcing school was going to resume face-to-face lessons, the decision was reversed; an outbreak of the virus at a garment factory north of Colombo bred 1,600 cases in the span of a week and leaked into the community. School was not only not going to be face-to-face, it was going back to full online; not the hybrid model, one week on, one week off the kids had previously participated in. After school activities, including swimming, were also set to resume. These, too, were postponed or canceled. 

A Halloween party was canceled. My office was then going to host kids for door to door trick-or-treating in our office building. Canceled. Door decorating contest. Canceled. We planned a last minute trip to Weligama, the beach, to go surfing and fishing and relaxing by the crash of ocean waves. Canceled.

I think both Elise and I kind of knew another government curfew was inevitable. So far, this curfew is limited to the Western Province which includes Colombo. We’ve been told it will be lifted on Monday, but the last curfew was instituted on a holiday weekend, too.  That curfew lasted 10 weeks. We’re hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. 

In anticipation, Sam created is own quarantine activity, freezing LEGO men and action figures in ice to be chipped free later with small picks and screwdrivers like a paleontologist liberating a frozen mastodon from  an Arctic glacier. 

Virtual PE

Friday morning, Sam woke in a horrendous mood. He’s becoming more the moody teen. Wonderful when the mood is a good one. He has the capacity to fill the entire house with a noxious cloud of gloom when the mood is boorish, like a sinkhole swallowing the house.  I have always said he has the capacity to be the kindest, most gentle person I know. The converse is also true.  He was looking forward to going to Weligama the most; he’s become quite fascinated with fishing. 

I have a long history with fishing. My dad took us fishing all the time when I was a kid. We’d go out into the Atlantic in his boat, triple outboard motors now. Maybe only twin outboards then. Straight out the Jupiter inlet. There were no seas he was afraid of, angling the bow into the incoming swells at just the right angle, having a prescient knowledge of when to speed the boat up and when to slow it done at just the right moment to insert the hull between the sine wave of the incoming tide and ride the waves out. It was though he spoke to the ocean, and the ocean spoke back, spraying salt into our faces as the tan stretch of sand receded behind us and the vast expansive of deep violet ocean opened up before us. 

I grew up fishing with my dad, but never learning to fish. My dad may have been a micromanager. Or maybe we were truly so inept at fishing he really did have to do everything for us. I caught a lot of fish, but never became very knowledgeable in the language of lures, line, filaments, and weight. I could bait a hook, but never knew the strategy behind fishing, the why of a certain bait in a certain spot at a certain time of day dropped at a certain depth. I could pull a fish (big ones, too) from the briny deep, but always pulled it straight into my dad’s waiting arms where he unhooked the fish, threw it in the cooler, and baited and dropped my line for me. 

I think he enjoyed providing the service, like a charter fisherman. But I never really learned how to fish. And, thus, my interest in fishing waned because I could never go fishing on my own. I didn’t know how. And I never had the proper equipment. Or a boat. 

It seems the fishing bug skips generations, because Sam is obsessed. But I lack the knowledge to help him. He’s been researching fishing in reference books and shopping for fishing gear online. We ordered him a rod and reel and some fishing line, hoping it will all work together. I tried asking my dad for suggestions, but the recommendations provided in terse, sparsely worded emails written like haiku were difficult to decipher. 

On some level, I know it is not about the outcome. Though I do think Sam would be disappointed if he never caught a fish, I am able to take him fishing. My interest is not lacking. I would love nothing more than to sit on the beach or the rocks with him watching him for hours cast his line into the sea. I just won’t be able to offer much in the way of instruction. We’ll have to figure it out on our own. 

But this adventure, sadly, is postponed indefinitely. Another victim of the global pandemic.

Tennis lesson

This curfew started rough, but only a day or two in, we are already finding a rhythm to the day, though we are looking forward to seeing what Monday will bring. Will the curfew lift? If only for a few hours or days? Or will need come late Sunday night — as before — the curfew has been extended? 

The Tooth Fairy’s Favorite Food

Little Adam’s Peak

Part of our sojourn to the mountains was a plan to hike Little Adam’s Peak. What we thought may have been a trek worthy of the Hanna Family was a short jaunt up steep, though well-manicured, stairs off a footpath on the estate of 98 Acres, a neighboring tea plantation and upscale resort on the other side of the valley, opposite Ella Rock, a path short enough and tame enough to be conquered by old, wizened women in long skirts and sandals.

The views were no less inspiring had the hike been more draining and challenging, and we even were teased by the idea of a zip line. Unfortunately, there was a 30 kilo minimum which Peter was a few kilos shy of.

Fall in the Mountains with the Buttercup Trees

We just returned from a week in the mountains of Sri Lanka, forced to return a day early. We had planned to spend six nights at Amba, a tea plantation and homestay, nestled in the rolling, green hills near Ella. 

When we left Colombo, the dark cloud of the virus had mostly dissipated from the island. The kids were scheduled to return to school full time. After-school activities, including swimming, were set to resume. The kids were planning their Halloween costumes.

Bright yellow bushels of flowers painted the green hillsides, the buttercup trees were in bloom, and the flowers seemed to grow bigger and brighter with each passing day. We walked down to the watering hole once or twice every day to swim, skip along the river-smoothed rocks, or angle for small fish in shallow pools with homemade fishing gear made from plastic soda bottles, wine corks and ear plugs for bobbers, metal washers for weight. 

We saw the bright arm of the Milky Way on our first night, walking home under a blanket of stars and lightning bugs shimmering in the palms.  And I remain astounded by the broad breadth of sheer biodiversity on display, all of God’s creatures in wild, ruckus celebration: dragonflies, monkeys, and field mice, mongoose and butterflies, bees and water buffalo and peacocks, fireflies and mint green-feathered parrots. 

Sadly, what began as a relaxing few days was gobbled up by news of a blossoming coronavirus cluster in a garment factory north of Colombo. What started as one reported case grew exponentially by the day. We woke to news of 100 cases, then 200, 400, 600, finally — by day five — plateauing at over 1,000 cases in a factory of 1,600 workers. 

Our thoughts gloomily turned to the threat of another lockdown, though the reality has yet to materialize.  Local media purported there was no community spread, but headlines in the coming days would report of a case at a hospital here, or a government office building there, supporting our suspicion there had been community spread all along; the government failed to test or report it for fear of tarnishing their reputation of having effectively corralled the virus. 

Neither Elise nor I were in a mood to pat ourselves on the back. Sam appeared at the open window to our room at 11:00, “Clementine is throwing up.”

Elise and I dashed upstairs to where the kids were staying to find Clementine on her knees in front of the toilet. She would have a fever for the next two days. She still does today, day three. A stomach bug, a culprit we are familiar with from our days on the Indian subcontinent. We have since narrowed it down to the fresh curd; Clementine was the only one who ate it, but she didn’t just have a taste, she downed an entire bowl of curd, treacle drizzled over the top. 

We couldn’t keep our imaginations from running wild, quarter sprints on an indoor track in our heads. Both Elise and I did mental contact tracing, recreating a map of every possible encounter wherein Clementine (or any of us) could have possibly been exposed. We’ve been very careful. Many think we’ve been over cautious, but Elise immediately blamed herself as though she were a goal keeper who let in the game-winning puck. 

After we talked to the doctor, the initial diagnosis was dengue and we were urged to return to Colombo. 

We returned to a Colombo that seemed like a physically drained place, as though a palpable pall had been pulled over the city. Everyone who didn’t wear a face mask wore one now. Traffic was phlegmatic, uninspired. But we were glad to be home. 

Though I had to work while in the mountains just being away from the office is restorative, playing War with Clementine before she got sick, admiring Sam’s ingenuity and perseverance with his handcrafted line. Removing the complex vectors of our everyday lives reveals the core being of a person, an individual in their rawest, most simple form. In Peter, it is a giant-eyed boy blinking back tears because he couldn’t catch up to the group who had left on a hike without him.  

And seeing this version of the three of them, remembering it is there, then reapplying those forces, is enough to carry one through another long week.