WHAT MAKES ME FEEL ALIVE 

I’m sitting at my grandmother’s desk as I write this: a 1950’s clunky metal thing that I was adamant I wanted to keep after she passed away on her 96th birthday as I sang her Agustín Lara songs and rested one of my hands on her chest and held her hand with my other. I’m actually looking outside the window of what used to be her study, watching people in face masks walk their dogs across the tree-lined boardwalk of this main avenue in Bogotá. I moved to the flat where she and my grandfather lived since 1987, where he died four years before her. I did so during the start of the peak of COVID-19 contagion in Bogotá, moving most of the boxes myself (it took 18 trips with my small Renault filled with stuff to the top and two weeks of not feeling my calfs). This is the first thing I’ve written on this desk; the first thing I’ve written since March. 

I have been like a gypsy since the start of the pandemic. My son’s school announced its closure on the 13th of March; on the 14th I went to my Saturday champeta dance class because there were only a handful of confirmed cases in Colombia and what were the odds. On the 15th all schools were closed, and I called my boss to tell her I would have to work from home because I had no one to leave my eight year old boy with. After 36 hours inside my flat with my partner and my son and our boxes filled with my books and their vinyl and legos we realised we would go insane if we didn’t find an alternative. My son is fuelled by jetpacks that are never switched off and by then his school had said nothing besides “we’re closed until further notice”. On the 17th I called my boss to ask her permission to go to the countryside and work from there. We packed whatever we had in the fridge (not very much), four t-shirts each; I brought two pairs of yoga pants. We left that night without much planning, imagining we would be there for a few days. All roads were closed two days later, preventing us from returning home. 

We arrived at a house by the Guatavita lake in the middle of the Andes, the very lake that originated the legend of El Dorado. That’s when homeschooling started and my resolve withered out. Homeschooling meant, in my son’s school’s terms, we send you tons of homework expecting your kid to do it alone, but you will need to spend at least 5 hours each day teaching him how to multiply in columns, the motion of the earth around the sun and the configuration of a symphony orchestra. Like everybody else on the planet, there was also working (7 hours per day), cooking (3 hours per day; 2 of which during lunchtime), cleaning the house (2 hours per day when it really should have been 3). Add in basic needs like eating, bathing. Add in the time needed to chase after a boy who clearly sees I hate being his teacher, am terrible at it, hates learning at home and would much rather be outside playing with his hairy German shepherd. Add in the activity that took most time out of every single day: collapsing emotionally; breaking down frequently, repetitively and with complete abandon. Add all that in and there was no time for sleeping. No time for reading. No time for writing. No time for being human; only time for existing. 

Nearly four months later school went on break, but the move we had planned for the first week of April couldn’t wait any longer. We drove back with a special permit, dropped my boy at his dad’s, and my partner and I started packing. Over the course of my son’s school holidays (a time I expected to spend slowing down, focusing on my job, and recovering once I completed my move) workmen fell ill with the virus, the neighbourhood where my new home awaited me fell under strict lockdown – twice -, one pipe broke flooding the apartment downstairs, then another flooding the kitchen. The time I expected to spend resting was spent packing, repacking, unpacking, cleaning, disinfecting, calling workmen and buying paint; in sum: everything but the recovery period I imagined.  

My job is suddenly more demanding than ever. My son’s school would normally start in 4 days, but they even haven’t announced a start date yet, let alone how school will resume in these conditions. I got up at 4AM this morning in order to make time for writing. There are boxes piling up everywhere I look. I have only managed to read one book since March 13th and the book I was writing got put on the freezer at page 164. There has been no yoga, less sleep. There has been, however, better eating (which my rounder cheeks clearly demonstrate), more time spent in the kitchen with my son, a deeper connection with my partner, more time spent imagining all the what ifs cuddled in bed wrapping my fingers around my son’s caramel curls. 

For some reason I can’t fathom, albeit all the breakdowns and exhaustion, I actually prefer this. Most days I almost wish that things never go back to normal. I think what used to be normal isn’t necessarily better. I prefer spending my time at home crying because my son got out of the shower fifteen minutes ago and is still sitting on the floor wrapped up in a towel, I have a meeting in ten minutes and we’ve run out of time for maths than in a crammed office where I find it hard to concentrate because I can hear everyone else’s telephone calls and fingers typing on keyboards like a million mice tap dancing. 

I prefer breaking down because I burnt the beans for the “nacho volcano” I had planned for lunch than over the fact that I’m late for work yet again. I’d rather start working at 5AM and be done by noon so I can spend the afternoon watching films with my son than rushing back home from the office at 5PM just in time for night time hassle. Of all the things I’ve lost during this pandemic the only one I mourn for is the time I used to have between my son’s departure in a green school bus and my own departure for work. That’s the time I used to spend sipping Yorkshire tea while reading memoirs and novels and writing my book. But hey; school is about to start again and who knows? Maybe they will have already come up with a system that doesn’t require me to teach and I’ll be able to work while my son learns so that I can carve out one little hour each day to do what makes me shift from feeling I’m merely surviving to feeling alive: writing.