Moving Out
On the morning of March 17th, 2020 I rented a car and escaped Manhattan.
My husband Andrew and I had been spending most of our time for the past 10 days in our cozy ~400 square foot apartment, listening to the stomping from upstairs and the fighting from across the landing, blasting our air purifier at the putrid cloud of the diagonal downstairs neighbor’s cigarette smoke, watching as apartments across the alley slowly emptied. My auditions had crept to a halt and my side-hustle-turned-main-hustle was stealing my focus as the pendulum of availability swung in its favor.
On the evening of the 16th, I called my beautiful badass sister, Tricia. She works as a doctor in South Carolina and she was watching as her hospital prepared for the oncoming virus. “It’s worse than they’re saying, Anna. Get out.” Tricia is thoughtful, she’s rational, but she said that with fear in her voice.
I laid in bed that night asking Andrew the sensible questions like, “what if this were a zombie apocalypse? What if we had to get out of the city with just our backpacks? Should we walk on the bridge or through the tunnel? Should we buy more canned beans?” (The answer to that last question, of course, was no.)
On the morning of St. Patrick’s Day, I awoke with a pep. Tumbling into the kitchen for a cup of tea I saw the headline, “NYC May Shelter in Place”. And it may shelter in place in the next 48 hours. Andrew was juuust starting his day at the kitchen table where he had been working remotely for over a week (thank you, PM!) as I buzzed around and began a flurry of texts with my mom. “Stay with us!” My parents recently moved into a house with a lower floor that could operate separately from the rest of the home. “Come on down!” We would have our own bedroom and bathroom and enjoy warmer South Carolina weather. “GET OUT” We could quarantine there for two weeks. “GET OUT TODAY IF POSSIBLE!”
I started packing.
Underwear? Check. Passports? Check. Pajamas? Check. The fiddle leaf fig, the rubber tree plant, the rosemary, the ficus, the pothos? Check, check, check, check, check. It would only be for two weeks, right?
Andrew took calls for work as I quietly pirouetted around the apartment, grabbing this, packing that. “Oh hey, we’re going to stay with my parents.” “Wait, what?! Hold on, I have to jump on this call” “We get the rental car at 8” “TONIGHT?”
Did I rent a car without fully discussing it with my husband? Yes. Did Andrew think getting out of the city was the right thing to do at the time? No. Does he think it was the right choice now? YES, HE DOES. Because those two weeks turned into two months. And those two months turned into “until there is a safe vaccine”. I drove us (and our plant babies) out of the city that night.
The weeks that followed after quarantining have been dark, and uncertain and painful, but they have gifted us cherished time spent with my parents, my sister and her kids, time with my little brother and his absolute Princess of a wife.
We watched as our city suffered through the first wave of the pandemic, as my industry shut down, as our friends slowly left, and we made our next decision together. It was time to move out. Time to get the succulents (no plant left behind) and end the lease of our tiny home for the past 4 years. Time to move out, to save up, to reassess.
And fortunately for us all, there’s nothing but time.
