The Coronavirus, Grandma’s Condo and Toilet Paper

When the coronavirus started to get serious, my husband Bob and I were at a Mexican resort, trying to take one last vacation before the world shut down, unable to enjoy watching pelicans dance with the waves because of worry.

Acapulco was gorgeous but we were too worried to enjoy it, and left early to start the journey home

Our oldest child, Aryk, was hunkered down at Keele University in England, one of the last students still on campus, trying to decide if coming home would disrupt their chances to graduate this summer. Our youngest, Gavin, was in Vermont, gathering up their things (and their emotional support cat) from college.

Bob and I had stopped working full-time in 2018, envisioning an adventurous retirement spent exploring the world. We rented out our house and happily hit the road. The kids went to college. We explored Mexico. Life was good.

But the coronavirus changed everything. In a blink of an eye, we needed a family home, and to reel in the kids, ASAP. Since Bob’s mom had passed away in January, we decided to move into her Pennsylvania condo instead of selling it. We hustled to purchase plane tickets for kids before borders closed, flew from Acapulco to Mexico City, packed up our truck, and began the five-day, 2,500-mile odyssey north from Mexico City to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Thus all four of us journeyed toward the empty condo of a dead woman from different points on the globe.

Bob and I, driving 8-10 hours a day in our trusty Toyota Tacoma, worried about picking up the virus from every gas pump, every hotel room door, every person who coughed near us in a rest stop on our way to the bathroom. Shoulders tight, we fretted that the Mexican border would close before we got through, that we would get sick or be stopped and quarantined along the way, that we wouldn’t be able to get food to eat.

Images from the rainy drive home

When we crossed the border into the United States, I cried with relief.

At the same time, we worried that our kids would pick up the virus as they traveled. Gavin had to fly from Mexico City (where they were visiting us for Spring Break) back to Champlain College to pick up their books, clothes and their emotional support cat, then from Burlington, VT, to Harrisburg, PA. Aryk had to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Atlanta , GA, before boarding a plane to Harrisburg. Both then had to take Ubers to Grandma’s condo.

Gavin arrived at the condo first. He was already experiencing coronavirus symptoms by the time Aryk showed up a few days later. They wisely isolated from each other as Bob and I powered northward, white-knuckled. By our final travel day, Gavin was coughing and feverish. Of course, we ran into a traffic jam in the last few hours to further exacerbate the tension.

Gavin with his trusty cat in Grandma’s condo, getting his temperature taken

But now we are together, and I am grateful. Gavin is on Day 10 of what we presume is the coronavirus (though the PA State Health Department declined to test him), still with a fever, extreme dehydration and no energy, but thankfully, the disease has not lodged in his lungs. The rest of us have no symptoms, but Bob and I are keeping six feet away from Aryk for 14 days, just to be safe. I serve Gavin meals and meds and massive pitchers of water wearing a hospital mask and rubber gloves, and pray I don’t catch it. We all wash hands and doorknobs voraciously. When Gavin is no longer ill, the 14-day quarantine clock will begin for us all.

Out walking with Aryk, always six feet apart

Every day that the three of us don’t experience symptoms is a victory. Every tick down of Gavin’s thermometer is a relief, though the subsequent day it always goes back up, so we are not out of the woods yet. We are all quarantined, getting food delivered and staying inside except to exercise.

But I’m grateful we are together, that we have a place to stay that feels like home. I’m grateful that Grandma left us some unexpected gifts, in addition to the condo, such as two thermometers, and masks and gloves to protect me from Gavin’s virus. I even found an electric keyboard in a closet, which will keep me busy for the next year re-learning how to play. I think Bob’s mother would be happy to know that, in death, she is taking care of her family so well.

Grandma’s unexpected gift

Most of all, I am grateful to be with my husband and kids. I pray we all make it through unscathed, not just the ones in my household, but my stepmom and six brothers and sisters, their spouses, my nieces (one pregnant) and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, aunts and uncles, and many, many cousins. Traveling the world seems like a distant memory. Now my dream is that my family and friends survive this and we can all restart our lives next year.

And I am eternally grateful that Grandma hoarded toilet paper.

Fortunately for us, Grandma was prepared for Armaggedon

El Templo Mayor: The Ruins Under Mexico City

We stumbled upon Precolombian ruins in the middle of Mexico City, the site of an ancient Aztec city called Teotichlan. There also used to be a huge lake here, and layers upon layers of ruins under buildings in Mexico City. What an incredible hidden discovery!

Colorful Xochimilco

Colorful Xochimilco - we explored one of the last vestiges of Aztec civilization, taking a gondola down the canals of Xochimilco in southern Mexico City!

Mexico City Art Fair

Mexico City Art Fair

We recently went to an Art Fair in Mexico City and found so
much more than we bargained for. We found high-quality art from galleries
throughout the Americas, with new and emerging artists sharing space with the
likes of Diego Rivera and Andy Warhol!

Castillo de Chapultepec

We spent the day at Castillo de Chapultepec, a large palace in Chapultepec Park that used to be the home of Emperor Maximillian and several presidents. Today it houses the Mexican History Museum! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1FVoY0PdeY&t=2s

Locking our Love Forever with Love Locks

Happy Valentine's Day! We wanted to celebrate the annual day of love by sharing the story of our love locks.

A couple of weeks ago, Bob and I attached a little gold padlock to the new Love Lock Bridge near the Riverwalk in San Antonio to lock our love forever, then kissed and took a selfie to mark the occasion. Again. On our lock was written in Sharpie “RG & LH,” inside a hand-drawn heart pierced by Cupid’s arrow. It was actually a chain-link fence along the river, but it was covered with hundreds of locks of other couples declaring their undying love.

It was the 15th time we have declared our forever love by placing a lock on a bridge. Normally we are not super-sentimental people, but love locks are a ritual we have grown to cherish during our travels, leaving our mark on bridges and walls all over the United States, Europe and Mexico (so far).

The 1st Lock: Paris

It all started in the summer of 2016, when I was planning to accompany Gavin’s scout troop on a week in the romantic city of Paris. Before we left, Bob gave me a padlock and asked me to write our initials on it and hang it on the Pont des Arts Bridge, which was famous for having so many lovers’ padlocks affixed to it that it groaned under the weight, and authorities had had to cut them off. He had seen the bridge during a weekend he spent alone in Paris during a business trip, and thought it would be nice to have our own lock there.

Surprised and touched by this rare sentimentality, I happily obliged. After the troop set off for the next leg of their trip, Switzerland, I went down to the River Seine and searched for the love locks. The city had decommissioned the Pont des Arts Bridge in 2015 because of the weight of the locks, but they were all around it, thousands of lovers’ padlocks tumbling down the bannisters and onto the railings of the river walls beyond. Across the river from where I stood was a magnificent view of the Louvre. I locked our padlock, blew a kiss to Bob across the ocean, and took pictures. I’m sure if the locks get too heavy, authorities will cut them off again. But until then, RG & LH will grace the Pont Neuf on the River Seine in Paris.

It was a grand, and small, gesture of love. It felt good. It made me think about why I had married this man, what we had experienced together, and how special our life was.

Hamburg, Germany

Three years later, we were visiting my brother Patrick in Hamburg, Germany, and walking along the Elbe River when we saw another bridge covered with lovers’ locks. We didn’t realize the tradition had expanded beyond Paris. Since we were leaving the country the next day, we went and found a hardware store to buy a lock, wrote RG & LH with a Sharpie and enlisted Patrick to hang it for us. A few weeks later, he sent a photo of our lock on the bridge. (Thanks, Pat!)

And with that, we were off, searching for love lock bridges, or creating our own, everywhere we went. While on a five-week tour through Europe, we hung locks everywhere.

London, England

In London, we strolled across the Jubilee Bridge, a pedestrian bridge, and listened to a street musician playing Caribbean drums while we snapped our padlock in a spot all its own and kissed above the Thames River.

Rome, Italy

After a long day of sightseeing as a family in Rome, when Gavin’s and my feet were aching from miles of walking, Bob trekked back in the rain to hang a lock from an iron bannister on a bridge crossing the Tiber River. 

Sorrento, Italy

Farther south in Sorrento, on a solo weekend trip while I was off doing genealogy searching with some Italian cousins, Bob discovered an iron fence with love locks along the Mediterranean coastline about a mile from his hotel during his morning run. He spent the afternoon searching for a padlock and a Sharpie, but a torrential downpour forced him to wait to return until the next morning, when a break in the rain gave him time to quickly walk there and fix the lock in place before heading for the train station.

Hydra, Greece

In Greece, during a daylong boat trip, Hydra, an idyllic fishing village where bleached-white houses climb up the mountainside from the azure Mediterranean, offered herself as a entrancingly scenic host to our love lock.

Ludlow, Vermont

The tradition continued when we returned to North America. First, we affixed a love lock to a bridge in Ludlow, Vermont, where we have our second home.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Then we headed down to live in Mexico for the first six months of 2019. During a two-night on break the road trip south, we took the streetcar to hang a lock on a chain-link fence in New Orleans, under a banner that read Love Locks NOLA and in front of the Eiffel Society, a club built from parts of a former Eiffel Tower eatery.   

Leon, Mexico

In Mexico, the first city we stayed in was Leon, which had a love locks bridge at one end of the Causeway of Heroes, a wide pedestrian walkway that serves as the gateway into the old city, and we put our lock through the padlock of another lock at the top. The bridge looked down upon a highway, with mountains in the distance.

Lake Chapala, Mexico

We never found a good spot in Tlaquepaque, where we lived for four months, or Guadalajara, the city next door. But we visited beautiful Lake Chapala, half an hour south, for a day trip and walked out to the end of a fishing pier to hang our lock on a rusted turquoise railing overlooking Mexico’s largest freshwater lake. On the way, we had been stopped by announcers for a local radio station who were broadcasting live, and thus posed for the obligatory selfie in our new orange Guadalajara T-shirts.

Guanajuato, Mexico

By far the most interesting place to hang our lock was the magical town of Guanajuato, where there’s an alley so narrow that people can kiss from across two balconies. There’s a tragic legend of a young man who was killed for stealing a kiss from the daughter of a rich man. We put up our lock and kissed across the alley. (Fortunately, Bob survived.)

Montreal, Canada

We lived in Vermont during summer 2019, and took a couple of trips to Montreal, Canada, hanging one lock on a bridge overlooking Gay Village and the other on a small bridge in the main pedestrian area along the St. Lawrence River, looking out at a huge Ferris Wheel.

The Farm, Cascade, Pennsylvania

When we visited The Farm, the homestead in the mountains of Central Pennsylvania where Lisa’s paternal grandmother grew up, we hung a love lock from the rusty metal rope that secures the entrance to the old lane.

Thwarted

We were occasionally thwarted in our efforts to declare our love by hanging public padlocks. In the beach town of Cambrils, Spain, there was no official Love Locks bridge, so we scouted the promenade along the ocean but never found a spot where we could thread a padlock. There was an official Love Locks spot in Barcelona, but we didn’t have time to visit it. We have looked several times while in Burlington, VT, but have not yet found a spot for a padlock.

Part of the tradition of the Love Locks is to throw the keys into the river to seal your eternal love, but we don’t do that because we don’t think that particular gesture of affection is good for the health of the fish or the river. We still hold all the keys to each other’s hearts.

Up Next ...

We have just arrived in Mexico City and will be looking for a place to hang our 16th lock. We’ll keep you posted!

By Lisa and Bob

Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary

Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary

We spent the day at the Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. It's an amazing place where millions of monarch butterflies fly each winter from the northeastern United States and eastern Canada to spend the winter and mate. They return in March and April. We had to hike up a mountain to get to where the butterflies filled the trees and swarmed the sky above. Join us!