Day 87: Incredulous

June 18, 2020 Covid

It’s my birthday and we’re at Volkspark Friedrichshain. I’m arriving here, fashionably late to my own party because I was busy making undercooked zucchini bread, and the mood is immediately strange: We get a call from Rocío’s mum, who’s in the hospital with her dad following an appendix surgery. It’s not going great.

Sometime last year I had a client meeting in West Berlin, freshly back from a trip to Mexico. Standing in their office, still reeling from the jet lag, I expressed my incredulousness of having just left Mexico and now being there, with the client, upon which she mockingly responded “Oh, you’re talking about the magic of air travel?”

The truth is that air travel does feel magical, especially on this birthday of mine: We head towards the exit of the park, away from people, and book a flight for Rocío to Mexico on our phones. In about 24 hours she’ll be on another continent and on her way to the hospital, and particularly now, in the middle of this pandemic that has seemingly splintered the world back into small country units, that’s something to be incredulous about.

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