Notes from Lockdown

The sun beats on my skin, causing my upper arms to turn light pink. We had just finished watching a movie from start to finish and it wasn’t even lunch. We can’t leave our home for the next two days, so the three of us spend time on the balcony, soaking up the unusually strong sun, and trying to get that vitamin d and fresh air any way we can.

It’s been three months now of full weekend lockdowns, part of strict precautions Turkey has taken to decrease COVID cases, although there are rumors restrictions will lighten with the onset of tourist season next month. For my Enneagram 3 husband, Afshin, being forced to stay inside for the weekend has handed him a convenient excuse to disregard any semblance of routine and trash the to-do lists, knowing everyone else around him is forced to do the same (as a 9, I’ll take any excuse to chill). Saturdays and Sundays, we throw out any sort of agenda, graze throughout the day, don’t cook dinner, and watch every Mark Wahlberg movie on Netflix (there’s a million and also they’re all the same and also maybe I’m getting him mixed up with Matt Damon).

We spread out a baby quilt—one that made the trek from my parents’ home in the US to our home in Turkey, tucked into the bottom of a suitcase—on the concrete floor of the balcony. My daughter, Esther, sits and plays with an assortment of things: a fridge magnet from a local restaurant, a couple of toy rattles, a near-empty baby wipe packet, and a pacifier we paid entirely too much for only for her to reject. I’m next to her cracking open walnut shells, two pounds worth we received from our landlord last fall.

February so far has brought temperatures that feel much more like late spring than the bleak winter. While winter’s in Turkey are mild compared to what I’ve experienced back in the Upper Midwest, typically a thin layer of white would have blanketed the ground by now, the quiet stillness settling in for just a while longer. But this year we’ve only had snow once or twice, each time melting before morning. Our daughter’s only experience with it was standing by the window watching the large flakes fall before going to sleep. But with temperatures well above freezing these past couple of months, the grass has already begun to turn green, birds chirp, and we bask in the sun.

“We should lower her crib soon,” I say, eyeing our baby who’s leaning forward, anxious to crawl. Afshin sits next to us eating last night’s leftover rice and chicken straight from the frying pan. “The whole crib needs to be taken apart to do it, so I need your help,” I continue, taking a hammer to another walnut.

“There are no shoulds,” he says in mock seriousness as he hands Esther a piece of shredded chicken. “This is a democracy. We can do what we want.”

He’s teasing me, exasperated by my American paranoia and obsession with safety. Middle Easterners take a much more relaxed approach to parenting I’ve come to (mostly) accept, and if it were up to him, our baby would probably be trying her hand at hammering open walnut shells right now.

It’s a joke, but I know his underlying thoughts: We could leave any day now.

And more than that, the lowering of the crib marks the passing of time. What was once a newborn is now an infant who sits and will soon be a crawler and climber. Time rolls forward in a place we don’t want to be.

I inhale deeply, feeling the sun on my eyelids. Setting the pan aside, he picks up Esther and they go to the edge of the balcony to watch the neighbor kids play in their yard below. She blows raspberries—a new skill she’s learned that soothes her teething gums—and Afshin mimics her sounds. The streets are quiet, save for a lonely police car or city truck rumbling by. The clothes on the line blow lazily back and forth, the sun’s rays bleaching out the tomato stains on baby clothes.

Afshin has described the tension in our house like the drums from Jumanji. Suddenly, with the recent rescinding of unfair immigration policies, we have found ourselves thrown back into living in the short-term, the war-like drumming intensifying as each day passes. We lustily eye the suitcases on top of our wardrobes, scour job listings in the US, and research how much rent we can afford.

Many family and friends have asked if we are feeling more hopeful now than we have in the last four years. And we are. But I also know hope can be a tricky thing. In an instant it can grow big, ballooning up in our hearts, putting a spring in our step, causing us to lean forward in anticipation. But just as quickly as it swells, it can burst when we dare to take too big of a breath. It can shatter and deflate, forcing us to slump back in our seats, completely gutted, as each week passes with no news or updates on our immigration case.

Hope slips and slides, and I never know how tight or loose my grip on it should be.

I suppose that’s why we do not put our hope in elusive things, in principalities or politicians, but the one, true Hope, firm and secure. And yet I’m realistic enough to know that life isn’t always so simple, that canned answers (even when they are wholly true) don’t always solve the problem at hand.

I read once that the opposite of hope is desperation. I won’t argue whether or not that’s true, but hope and desperation are more intertwined than we think—like two twisted vines from the same root. Where one ends and one begins doesn’t matter. And yet it is there, in the nuance of life, in complications and competing emotions, the Creator resides. God, the Divine, works in these crossroads.

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Photo by noah eleazar on Unsplash