Chapter 3: Day 2: Dawn

According to legend, the god Maui not only created the island paradise we call Hawaii, but he also made the days longer.

The story goes that he found his mother Hina, who was normally cheerful, sad, and upset one day. Being a dutiful son, he asked what was bothering her. She told him that she was sad because the days were too short and because of that her clothes would not dry, and the crops did not grow fast enough. Maui decides he needs to do something to make his mother happy and sets out to capture the sun. He cuts down palm trees and using their fiber creates a strong rope and then in the dark of night climbs to the top of Haleakala where the sun makes his home. When the sun rises, Maui lassos the sun’s legs. The sun fought mightily against the rope, but it held. Trapped, the sun asks Maui why he had done this. Maui explained he was there because Hina was unhappy. The days were too short. She could not dry her clothes and the crops were not growing fast enough. If the sun promised to travel more slowly, he would let him go. The sun promised and that is why Hawaii has days that are long and full of sun.

I am sitting in one of the dark green faux rattan chairs around my fire pit when I recall this legend from King David’s book. I have been here for the better part of an hour. Sleeping has never been one of my great strengths and being six hours different than my normal circadian rhythms has not helped. I guess I could have stayed in bed and read or checked my Facebook feed and hoped that I would fall back asleep again. But I am too restless for that. Besides, how often does one get to embrace the new day over the Pacific? In the last few moments, the fuchsia, ginger, and saffron fingers of dawn have appeared on the horizon. It is a sight to see and at this moment I am grateful for my restive mind.

Beyond the birth of a day, I realize why I have been reminded of Maui and Hina.  For the last hour, I have been getting the occasional waft of a rich fruity scent that has a hint of musk to it. It is oddly familiar to me and like a familiar object whose name lurks just beyond your grasp. It bothers me that I cannot identify it. With sudden clarity, I know it is jasmine. A fragrance that reminds me of my mother’s hugs as it is the dominant aroma of her favorite perfume, Coco.

I have not spoken to my mother yet. I could call her now, but I suspect she won’t answer. She is likely away from her phone. Besides dawn is a magical time. A time when the darkness of past days is cancelled, and you are embraced by the promise of the possibility of a new day. Isn’t that why birds chirp, peep and tweet the loudest then? I listen. I can hear the cooing of doves, the screaming screech of the native Alala who the Indigenous people of Hawaii consider a deity. There are other bird songs I cannot identify. They all join in an overture to the new day. I savor it as the world is flooded with light.

It is early June 2020. I am in a Bob’s Hamburgers restaurant off Brazil’s Highway 116, the road that connects Rio to Sao Paulo. For the past three hours I have been in the back seat of a cab that I have hired to drive me from our home in Barra De Tijuca to Guarulhos Airport in Sao Paulo. The drive has not been unpleasant despite the fact that I am wearing a surgical mask, suffering from the near ninety-degree weather as we are not using air conditioning. Neither Marcus, my driver, nor I totally trust the fact we are Covid free. We stopped here because the restaurant is attached to an Ipiranga service station, and we can fill the cab’s tank as both Marcus and I can empty ours.

Having taken care of the pressing business, I have paused in the waiting area of this dusty service station to consider whether or not I want to get something to eat. Bob’s Burger in Brazil are as ubiquitous as bikinis on a beach in Rio. The original fast food burger place in Brazil they are everywhere from standalone restaurants to kiosks in malls to sharing space at a service area. When I first came to Brazil, I thought it was hilarious as Fox had just launched an animated show called “Bob’s Burgers.” Nadine did not think it nearly as amusing as I did but she insisted their burgers were better than McDonalds and to prove her point took me out to lunch there. She ordered Bob’s Grand Picanha 200g as well as shakes and fries. To my surprise the burgers were good and the shakes excellent. Which is why I pause now. Who knew when I would be able to eat again?

Before I make up my mind, I notice a television is playing in the seating area of the eatery. It is tuned to Globo News. On screen is a “live” helicopter shot of a graveyard in Sao Paolo, the fourth largest city in the world and the largest city in the Americas, where a bulldozer is ripping into the earth excavating mass graves. The health care system here has fallen apart. Thousands are dying every day, and the death industry cannot keep up. It is a scene from some bad apocalyptic movie, not real life. How did our hero get here? It is a good question. One that I have pondered mightily over the last few months.

It started, at least a little, in anger. When Nadine had returned to Brazil at the end of January, she had promised to return to the US in time for us to celebrate my birthday on March 14. However, the number of issues she had to deal with in Rio De Janiero had seemed to multiply faster than rabbits when she arrived at our home there. One of the apartments she owned had lost a tenant and now needed to be repaired and updated before it could be offered to rent. Our home’s roof had developed a leak and could only be repaired under her supervision along with many other things. As a result, she pleaded I come to her, as opposed to returning to the USA as she had promised. Would I please come to Brazil for my birthday. She would take us away to Paraty, a seaside resort famous for its party lifestyle and Cachaca, for a few days of celebration and fun.

Normally, I would have been happy to go but anger born from frustration had been my initial response. While I understood that life has a way of throwing you curve balls, a lesson that would hit home with a vengeance in just a few weeks, I also lived by the axiom “Say what you do, do what you say.” You keep your promises and Nadine had promised to return to the US. Now she was asking me to drop everything and come to Brazil. That was not so easy. I had a job. While working remotely or taking PTO was not a huge issue and could be managed it was an inconvenience. Fenway, our three-year-old Australian Cobberdog, would need to be boarded, which was an expense, but it too could be managed. But the biggest issue was my mother.

For the past eight years, since my father’s departure, she had lived by herself in their four bedroom, 3 and ½ bath split level colonial we had considered “home” for the past fifty years. She was independent in the sense she had no physical limitation that impaired her mobility or mental impairment despite her ninety years. She spent her days doing the work she had done all her life: the writing and editing of books. However, she no longer drove. She was challenged with various maintenance issues in the house. She was lonely and needed assistance nearly every day.

Which is why, when Nadine and I married shortly after Dad’s departure, we moved from my apartment in New York City to a townhome a couple of miles away from her. Someone had to take care of Mom. My sister had the desire but not the bandwidth as she had a career, two children and a husband to manage. My brother? Well let’s just say his priorities were elsewhere.

Part of my acceptance of my new role came from a promise made to my mother years earlier. My father had been hospitalized with what was later diagnosed with kidney failure. The physician treating him was a kind man who believed that telling best way path to compassion in telling patients and their families the whole truth about their diagnosis. I agree with that philosophy. Ripping off the band aid fast is a way to get beyond the pain to a place where more reasonable decisions can be made. In this case, we had been told that Dad’s kidneys would never function properly again, dialysis was likely to be a part of his life for as long as he lived as transplants were not given to octogenarians, and this would likely be a cause of death.

The drive home from the hospital was awful. The NJ Turnpike was moving at the pace of an arthritic tortoise, and we were driving into the afternoon sun on an early August day. The air conditioning was working overtime and losing the battle. Difficult thoughts comingled with uncomfortable surroundings produced a silence as thick as London fog. Each lost in our thoughts. Each contemplating what life would be like without Pops. Suddenly, Mom began to sob. Apologizing for her tears as if they were something to be ashamed of, she told me that she was frightened. That she had never been alone. She had gone directly from her father’s house to my father’s house. Being alone terrified her. Moved by her tears, and prompted by a few of my own, I had promised that no matter what I would make sure that she was never alone. Some might consider this a foolish pledge made in despair of the moment. They are probably right. But I have a problem that arises from the fact that I have read far too many fairytales or took my childhood socialization training far too seriously. That is, once I have made a promise, made a commitment I have an extraordinarily difficult time breaking it. You say what you mean and do what you say. You show up.

There is a scene from the movie Blindside, the movie where Sandra Bullock and her white affluent family adopt a very large African American young man. Michael Oher. In it he undergoes some psychological testing, and it is determined that he has an overwhelming need to protect and defend his family and those that he loves. I had seen the movie with my girlfriend and after the movie she had told me that the Michael Ohrer character in the movie had reminded her of me. Being a wise ass, moderately sized Jewish man, I asked, “Is it because I am a large Black man?” She may have punched me in the arm and said “No, you are singularly the most loyal man I have ever met.”

It was a wonderfully nice thing for her to say to me. And no doubt there are elements of truth in what she said but If for any reason that this narrative has given you the idea that I am beatific in any way, to use a Jersey expression, forget about it. I am a very flawed human being. I have no desire to list all my faults. It would take too long, and no doubt be boring to anyone not paid to listen to my confessions. I believe life is a journey of successive approximation. You try. You do your best. If you succeed, god’s speed. If you fail, pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, make corrections, move on.

My promise meant to me that I needed to be there for her. When minor household things such as the printer ink running low, a light bulb needed changing, or her computer became funky I was available for immediate twenty-four-hour service. I was also her companion. Most days, I would do a ten- or fifteen-minute drop in to make sure she was doing fine and remind her she was not alone. She would have preferred I ate dinner with her every day. She would have preferred I didn’t leave, and it became a major article of tension with us. “Why don’t you stay a little longer,” “Don’t you want to have dinner with me?” 

Eventually we set up a routine. When I was working from home, I would pop in every day just before lunch and have a cup of coffee with her before returning to my desk or going to the gym. Saturday morning, I would take her to King’s Supermarket and let her shop for her weekly groceries and then carry her supplies to the kitchen for her organization. Sundays we would have dinner together. Either Chinese food (1 egg roll, General Tso’s Chicken) or Smash Burgers. If she had to go the Dr. I took her. Shopping? I was here bag carrier and driver.

Getting someone to check in on Mom and take care of her immediate needs was not an issue. My sister Lotte would be happy to step in for a few days. She appreciated the burden I had taken on and was happy to give me a break. What made me hesitate is my own guilt leaving her alone. I, more than anyone else, knew how lonely she could get. How frightening it was to her. But isn’t the first rule of caregiving taking care of yourself?

I left for Brazil on March 8^th, 2020. I would spend the next week with Nadine in Brazil and return on March 17^th. Yes, the news was full of stories about the coronavirus. Trump had just declared under control and not to worry about it. Not that I believed him, but doctors were providing details about their frustration with treating the “novel Corona virus” and were sharing what they knew about how to prevent getting the disease including quarantining. The business press and who what and financial pundits discussing what an epidemic would do to the economy. It was all just background news to me. I was not particularly concerned. How bad could this be? I remember thinking how crazy the woman sitting next to me on the first leg of my trip to Miami was for wearing a surgical mask.

March 10^th found us in Paraty, a small coastal city one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Rio. It is also 175 miles from Sao Paulo. Given the relatively short distance from both cities, the beautiful coastal location, and archipelagos, and its famous for Cachaca, (Brazilian moonshine made at nearby sugar plantations), and an old city that retains the look of the colonial period, it is a place people go to forget the outside world. A place to party and relax and to enjoy your life. Nadine had chosen a wonderful place to celebrate my birthday. I can’t really say the same about the hotel she chose. It was two stars at best and at best resembled a no-tell motel done in Brazilian colonial style. Our room lay on the second floor facing a courtyard and while it had adequate air conditioning, emphasis on adequate, it did not have a television and their Wi-Fi had the speed of a dial up connection during a thunderstorm. Under normal circumstances, this would have been ideal. What could be better than to be in a beautiful vacation hideaway with little or no access to the outside world allowing you to fully enjoy your holiday bubble.

On March 11, when the WHO declared Covid a global pandemic we were on a chartered boat exploring the coast, drinking cachaca and feeding hungry monkeys outside the café where we ate dinner. It was not until we got back to our room and managed to attach ourselves to the cup and string internet that we got word of the declaration. I was not overwhelmingly alarmed. I assumed life would go on as before albeit with more intense screening for the disease and people would be more cautious. What concerned me more was Mom would not be so nonchalant. She spent a good deal of her day in her kitchen watching MSNBC and indulging in her favorite passions: hating Donald Trump. I had no doubt they were spinning the story as anti-Trump for no other reason than his response to the looming threat had the competence of a second grader working on quantum mechanics equation. As a rule, I called Mom everyday while I was traveling using Skype as the overseas charges for cell phone usage would plunge small nations into a debt crisis. As we had such spotty internet, I had not called her in the last couple of days but knowing she would be in full panic mode I called use cell service.

She picked up on the second ring. “Daniel?”

“Hi Mom. Greetings from Paraty!”

Normally my mother is an exceptionally gracious lady. She would have asked how my trip was going, whether the weather was good, how was the food and other questions that demonstrated her interest in my trip. This time she did not. She demanded, “When are you coming home?”

“You know this mom. My flight is scheduled to leave on the 16^th. I will be home the morning of the 17^th.”

 “Can you come home now?”

“What is up Mom? I will be home in a couple of days.”

“Have you been keeping up with the news? Do you know what is going on?” she asked in an accusatorial tone.

“Somewhat. The internet here is lousy and we don’t have a television. But I have caught snippets. It seems your beloved President is starting to take this thing seriously.”

“Daniel, MSNBC is saying that the President is considering shutting down travel from overseas and locking down the country. You need to come home.”

I didn’t say anything for a second. It was all too easy for me to imagine Mom’s panic. I was her primary care giver. She could not get food or anything else without me. If I were caught overseas who would help her? She would be on her own. Something I had promised her I would never let happen. I replied “Mom, let me see what I can do, and I will get back to you in a little while.”

When I hung up the phone, I told Nadine what was going on at home and how my mother was in full blown panic. To my beloved wife’s credit, she said with no prompting “Then my darling you must go home.” I called American Airline. I was not the only anxious American who wanted to go home. All the flights from Rio before my travel dates were completely booked. We tried flying out of Sao Paulo. They too were fully booked. Connecting flights, the same. When I asked the agent about what she had heard about flights being cancelled she said as far as they knew flights would be operating normally. She said not to worry. Easy for her to say. She didn’t have a nearly ninety-year-old mother who was getting worked up by cable news.

Frustrated in my efforts to rebook my flights but knowing that I had done all I could do I called Mom back and shared the news with her. She was not happy. I knew this was not directed at me. It was directed at the situation. She was scared. But it was hard not to take this personally. A son’s guilt. I told her that I would continue to try to get an earlier flight but not to worry I would see her on the 16^th. I promised.

How could I know what was coming? No one knew. But late at night I am still plagued by that promise. I should have called other airlines. I could have tried begging the airlines and explained my situation. Could have. Should have. Would have. The most worthless expressions in the English language.

From then on, I left my cell data on. I did not care what it cost. Things were getting serious, and I needed to get home. It is hard to enjoy yourself on holiday when your phone is constantly beeping with updates and the world as you know it is ending. It affected our behavior. We started avoiding crowds of any sort. We began to choose restaurants not only by cuisine but by whether they were crowded or better yet had an outdoor seating option.

On March 13^th, our last night in Paraty, after weeks of downplaying the pandemic Donald Trump declared Covid 19 a national emergency. The fact that the man who had downplayed Covid as no worse than the flu virus was now taking it seriously was alarming. When I called, Mom would barely say hello to me before asking “Have you had any luck getting on an earlier flight” and when I would respond in the negative, she inquired “And your flight on the 15^th is still leaving on time.” And when I reassured her that it was, she would tell me “Good. Make sure you are on that flight.”  It made me desperate to leave. The only way I could sleep at night was knowing on the fifteenth I would be headed home and a liberal dose of Cachaca.

On March 14, my birthday, we headed home to Rio. We were happy to leave. The last few days of the trip had not been the relaxing time we had hoped for. We were wrapped up in the terror of catching Covid and my desperate attempt to leave the country. Not that leaving the country was a completely comfortable feeling. I would be leaving my wife behind amid a pandemic. What kind of a husband does that? When I brought up these feelings with Nadine, she was both honest and gentle with me. She told me that she was frightened. Frightened she would catch the disease. Frightened that she would have to face it alone. Fearful she would never see me again. But she knew I must go. That my mother could not take care of herself and that her needs and fears were small compared to hers. She said “My love, you do not have a choice. You must go. I understand.”

Her understanding made me feel horrible.

About halfway through our journey, close to Angara del Reis, the home of one of Brazil’s nuclear power stations, we stopped at a roadside cantina for a bio break. The place had an open-air architecture that might have been popular in the fifties with a hint of decrepitude covered in faded blue paint. It was not a pleasant experience. The place was crowded, and we were unprotected. The men’s room was dark and dingy and when I went to wash my hands there was no soap or paper towels to dry my hands. For some reason, the whole thing reminded me of a scene from a Hunter Thompson tome. I was living in a Ralph Steadman drawing. Things were getting very weird and scary. I had just shaken my hands dry when my phone buzzed. It was a text from American Airlines. My flight had been cancelled. I showed Nadine. She hugged me and said “Oh Daniel. Do you want to call them now.”

I didn’t. I knew the call would be difficult and have long holds. I replied, “Let’s wait until we get home.”

We made one more stop before arriving home. The Guanabara Super Mercado, a huge supermarket off Avenue of the Americas in Barra de Tijuca, the section of Rio where I home is located.  We had decided on the latter part of our journey that we needed to provision up. Who knew how long this pandemic would last and neither of us had much appetite, excuse the pun, for going out, so we might as well stop now. It was a madhouse from a parking lot where drivers cut people off for parking spaces to tug of wars over rolls of toilet tissue and fist fights, not hyperbole, over a case of Itaipava beer. But that is not what bothered us the most. It was being amongst a crowd of people, maskless, in a place where there was no separation and where you could almost see the Covid virus doing pirouettes in the air above us. We left there with a profound desire not to do that again. Little did I realize that it would be a year in a half before I stepped foot in a grocery store again.

When I finally called American Airlines late that afternoon, I was placed on hold for nearly an hour. As someone who has flown over three million miles with them and had access to a special phone line for their customers, this was quite a change, albeit understandable. The agent I eventually spoke to have the tone of someone who had been run through a ringer. I had no doubt that she had dealt with dozens of customers who were now stranded and desperate to go home whom she had no ability to accommodate. I had no doubt she had suffered abuse by many of them. Therefore, I tried to treat her with as much kindness as I could. Even when she told me that American Airlines had cancelled all flights to and from  Rio until March 25 and that I was now booked on that flight. She also warned me that flight was provisional. She could not guarantee there would be no further delays.

When I hung up the phone with her, I called United and Delta, the two other US carriers who service Rio. The story there was the same. No flights for at least two weeks and even then, no guarantee. I was frustrated, angry with myself for putting myself in this mess. I should have seen it coming. But mostly I was feeling guilty. What about Mom?

I called my sister. I started off by telling her I knew that it was impossible for her to give Mom the daily care she needed. Which led to a dialogue about how could I say that? She was fully capable of handling it. I told her that she already had too much on her plate with a couple of teenagers, two cats, a dog, and a husband to be responsible for and that as magnificent as she was it would burn her out. Moreover, who knew how long this craziness would last? It would be better to get ahead of the curve than to be behind it. A nursing home was discussed and rejected not only because they were already breeding grounds for the disease and were causing a large number of deaths, but Mom hated them. Even when she was weak and recovering from surgery, she would ask every day to be set free. I could not blame her. To me they were dormitories of death.

We eventually hit upon a couple of ideas. The first was to ask Mom’s cleaning woman, Zita, a recent immigrant from Portugal, who was also cleaned my apartment, if she could stop in three times a week and bring whatever necessities Mom might need. She was capable and, in the past, she had provided when Mom needed it.

I called Zita. She, like so many immigrants, was willing to take on the extra duties for the additional cash it would bring in to help finance her American dream. Especially considering that most of her clientele had abandoned her during the pandemic, preferring to do their household chores now they were home full time.

I rang Mom. She was not happy that my flight was now delayed for ten days. “Why didn’t you get an earlier flight. I told you to get an earlier flight.” I could not convince her that I tried and there were no flights to be found. But I also understood. She was vulnerable, and the whole world was burning down around her. It was scary. Me being nearby would lessen that fear. And I wanted to be there for her, but I couldn’t. Her anger, my guilt. Neither of those emotions did either one of us any good but in these circumstances, they were immutable laws of the universe.

I did not leave the country on March 25^th. Nor on April 4^th. Or May 1, the world had shut down. Like a global game of musical chairs, you were stuck wherever you were when the music stopped. Nadine and I had it better than 99% of people who were living in the Covid world. Our home in Barra was in a gated community with a twelve-foot wall around it. We had help coming in three days a week. Now this may seem like we were putting people at unnecessary risk and to be fair we were. But Nadine’s housekeeper, Fatima, and her groundskeeper, Antionio, depended on the money we paid them to survive. And we paid them extra so they would not have to take public transportation. I am not saying we were saints for this. Sainthood would paying them and not asking them to come to work. They shopped, cleaned, cooked, and maintained for us and for that we felt truly fortunate to be in the situation we were in.

Things were going as well as could be expected in New Jersey. In addition to Zita coming three times a week to clean and check in on Mom we had established an Instacart “reservation” for her. Once a week she would get a delivery of her normal order of prepared meals and anything else she needed and could be found at Kings Market. If there were a special need, Milano cookies, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or household items like paper towels or Listerine wipes either Julia or I would add them to the order. Every night at 5pm her time I would call her on Facebook Messenger and have a video chat with her. It was not as good as me being there for her or for me, but it did give us the opportunity to see each other face to face and have a conversation about what was going on in her life. For her, it was mostly Donald Trump focused. She had a passionate dislike for the man, who could blame her, but his handling of Covid and his refusal to accept basic medical thinking sent her over the edge.  Her end of the phone calls were often long rants on Trumps failings, missteps, and incompetence. I did not mind. It meant she was engaged and well. For my part, I would often read her, she an editor of great note, paragraphs from a novel I was writing about my father’s war experiences.

In an odd way, these daily sessions made us closer than ever before despite the fact I was six thousand miles, not two, away from her. I am not saying it relieved the guilt or the pressure to get home. It did not. Every call would end with “have you heard any more about getting a flight home” or “I wish you were here” but our situation forced us to talk in way that we didn’t when we were in closer proximity.

Things were going great. Until they were not.