It’s 6.30am on an overcast Friday morning and I’m at the international terminal of Sydney airport for the first time in years. The arrivals hall is eerily empty. A huge screen right where the passengers walk out flashes with a McDonald’s ad: “Do you want hugs with that?” Against all logic the stupid thing is making me tear up. I do, but I’m not allowed. My mother and stepfather are about to arrive after more than 30 hours in transit from Washington DC to Sydney, and I’m to keep my distance, take them for Covid tests, then straight to the apartment hotel we’ve booked for their isolation. Hugs are not on the menu, even though I haven’t seen them in two years.
“Either they isolate or your whole family isolates,” the woman from NSW Health explained to me on the phone the day before, when I called to clarify the new rules. She said I could pick them up from the airport to drop them to their hotel, but I had to wear a mask and stay apart. I couldn’t stomach the idea of locking my parents in a bedroom in our house for 72 hours. With end-of year events, sports games and sleepovers, I also did not want to lock my young teenagers in. When I explained the plan to my mother, she was amenable. “We’ll have time at the hotel to get over our jet lag. And it’s better than 14 days,” she said.
The last two years have been the longest of my life; the longest I’ve gone without seeing my mother.
I moved to Australia in March of 2002 after falling in love with an Australian in Italy – we were staying at the same youth hostel in Naples and met in the basement coin laundry. We travelled together for a month before moving back to our respective countries and burning each other mixed CDs of lonesome love songs. After a year apart I moved here, happy to swap my filter coffee for flat whites and squirrels for giant spiders. My parents were looking forward to their first visit in June. Then my father died unexpectedly from a cardiac arrest in May. He was 55, I was 24, and I realised that life can change in a split second, with a phone call in the middle of the night.
So while I stayed, married the Australian and had two children, I was religious about my yearly trips back to the US, and my mother made regular trips here. When she remarried in 2008, she was lucky to find a man who also loved to travel. They had a trip planned to Australia in 2020 which included Western Australia, and I had a trip to Chicago for my niece’s bat mitzvah.
We all know how 2020 went. As the world sheltered in place and the news became more ominous, I worried less about not seeing them and more about them staying alive. But after they were vaccinated, and when the rest of the world began to travel again, I became impatient. We had missed so much in two years: hip replacements, moving house, graduations, Thanksgivings and birthdays. It made no sense that parents of adult Australian citizens were not considered immediate family. I signed petitions and joined a Facebook group which was working to reverse that decision. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2020 more than 7.6 million Australians, that’s 30% of the population, were born overseas. Most of that 30% would have close family abroad.
Finally, at the end of October this year, there was a change to regulations. I texted my mother straight away to buy tickets for December, prematurely since we did not yet have an exemption. She did. She’s not a spontaneous person so I could tell it stressed her out. Things were looking good and summer seemed so sweet, but six days before their flights the news of the Omicron variant hit. Fresh restrictions were announced daily. I felt awful. What if New South Wales followed South Australia’s lead and reinstated two weeks of quarantine?
I FaceTimed my mother two days before she left and she was sitting in her kitchen, looking worried. She had her pre-flight Covid test the next day, one of many things which might stop us from reuniting. People on the Facebook group whose parents were coming from South Africa reported cancelled flights, Christmas plans ruined. Friends flying abroad weighed up whether to postpone their trips again. There’s a point where all you have is hope though. There’s a point in these last two years where we’ve all just had to sit tight and hold on to whatever sliver of hope still exists.
At the arrivals hall, there are people filtering out now, some straight to the taxi rank, others met with bear hugs, hand-lettered signs, plastic-wrapped flowers and mylar balloons. I’m empty-handed and over-caffeinated. I spent hours yesterday shopping for groceries and stocking their small apartment with Tim-Tams, wine, liquorice and tea. Frozen dumplings, crackers and brie. Mangoes and ginger beer. Finally I see a white-haired couple pushing a luggage cart. I run towards them, stopping short. If you were there, you might have blinked and missed it: the barest of hugs.
The bear hug will have to wait.
Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our Twitter, & Facebook
We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.
For all the latest Covid-19 News Click Here
