Written by Christi Sparrow
I don’t think any of us will ever forget the speed and severity with which the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our lives in unimaginable ways. We will remember the stark differences between our daily routines pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. And we will never look at a gas pump or a roll of toilet paper the same way again. Here is our story of how we navigated the last two weeks of March 2020, six months into our extended family travel plan, when the pandemic tightened its grip on the world.
“What should we do?” I whispered to my husband Jay over what was probably our fourth coffee of the day while our kids played with Legos across the living room. He was the last one to pose this question that we both wished was rhetorical. It was my turn to repeat it. His worried, tired expression mirrored my own fears and anxiety.
The windows and doors were ajar, and a cool, refreshing breeze was gently drifting through the house, signaling the end of summer and the first hints of autumn. Outside the sun was shining, and I remember feeling genuinely confused and overwhelmed by the disparity between our peaceful, natural surroundings and the new fears that tormented my mind and much of the world.
It was Friday, March 20th, 2020, and I was in Denmark, Australia, at an eco-village where our family had come on March 7th for a 10-night volunteer work exchange stay, (cue Gilligan’s Island “three-hour tour” song). Our arrival had gone to plan: we settled in to the comfortable one-bedroom guest quarters in the eco-village’s common house. The 12 households that comprised the eco-village community greeted us warmly. My husband, Jay, helped each day with communal projects such as gardening, weeding, and digging holes for trees, fence posts, and drainage ditches in exchange for free accommodation and dinners for our family.
When we arrived in Denmark on March 7th, the coronavirus was certainly an escalating crisis in parts of the world, but we had felt virtually no impact in Australia since arriving in the country in late January. For us, up to that point, the threat of the coronavirus had only influenced our family’s decision to forego traveling to Bali before coming to Australia, but that was an insignificant consequence compared to the travel decisions that we were about to face and the questions and self reflection that we were about to stumble through in the coming weeks.
Below Image: Completing our WWOOFing jobs. (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)
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“I found a squishy one!” my daughter exclaimed excitedly as she stretched her five-year-old body to its limits to reach a fat fig dangling from a branch. She held the plump fig inches from her face and plunged her thumbs into the jammy fruit to expose the bright red, sticky sweet innards which quickly disappeared into her mouth. It was Saturday, March 14th, and the kids and I were on a mission to fill our little basket with fresh figs from a neighbor’s tree about a quarter mile down the road that only the locals knew about. One of our neighbor families from the eco-village had invited us along, and we felt a little rush of excitement picking and collecting these ripe jewels.
It was another warm, end-of-summer day, and as our little procession of two mothers and four kids strolled, (and scootered), slowly to and from the massive fig tree, I couldn’t help but relax into the simplicity of the morning’s activity. The gentle swaying of the trees, the quiet streets, and the singular mission of collecting figs quieted my soul. This is how a Saturday morning should be spent.
Below Image: Chloe and Camden picking figs close to the Eco Village.
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That afternoon Jay came in from the garden where he was digging holes for fence posts. “Did you see the news?” he asked me. “New Zealand is making everyone who enters the country self isolate for 14 days.” This exchange would later be known as our first deer-in-headlights moment and the start of a series of tough, hurried decisions.
Our family’s travel plans were to fly to New Zealand on March 18th and hop around the country before continuing on to Hawaii on April 25th. In short, our itinerary was no longer compatible with the tightening travel restrictions. But we soon found ourselves less concerned about rerouting our travel plans and more fixated on how to keep our nomadic family safe in the face of an unprecedented global crisis that was escalating quickly.
Over the next few days, we consumed the increasingly horrific headlines from around the world which provided a round-the-clock script of COVID-19 case numbers, death rates, overrun medical facilities, new travel advisories, lockdown measures, and empty grocery store shelves. We created numerous pro/con lists, Ben-Franklin-style. We spiraled in and out of conversations about whether or when to leave Australia, where to go and why, the risks to our family and others, and an unpredictable, severely contracting travel industry. We worried about our aging parents. We played Legos with our kids while our minds fell prey to new fears and the threat of worst-case scenarios.
We sank hours into canceling accommodation bookings and waiting on hold with both United Airlines and Air New Zealand to cancel our flight to Auckland and rebook our Honolulu flight to instead head to Los Angeles via Auckland on March 20th. Since our home in Texas was rented, we decided, temporarily, that our ultimate goal was to reach my Dad’s small condo in Florida which, as of April 1st, would be vacant. But in the back of my mind, I wasn’t convinced that we would board that March 20th plane bound for Auckland. And I don’t think Jay was either.
The air travel industry was changing day by day with increased restrictions and cancelled flights, and I wasn’t confident we’d make all of our connections smoothly and without self-isolation requirements interrupting our travels. Plus the itinerary would be brutal: six hours to fly to Auckland, twelve hours to fly to Los Angeles, two more flights for me alone with the kids to get to Florida, while Jay would fly to Texas to pick up our car and drive the 1,200 miles to meet us in Florida three days later. Not to mention the lines, crowds, chaos, and inherent risks of moving through airports and boarding crowded planes. Why exactly would we go through all of that, just to find ourselves in quarantine in a different location? Moreover, from where we sat in Australia, the U.S. appeared to be growing more unpredictable each day with decentralized rules and advisories that varied from state to state. But I was scared of becoming stranded so far from our aging parents.
It’s not lost on me that my family is extremely fortunate to have had options. I know there are countless families who don’t have choices. We had choices that each had the potential to keep our family safe, and we had the means and just enough time to be selective. So it was our mounting fears about an uncertain future, how to keep our kids safe, and how we would navigate a worst-case scenario so far from home and our families that kept me up at night.
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Searching for Signs
I had heard of tarot cards, but I had never sought a reading for myself, nor had I ever researched the cards’ history or significance. But here I was, sitting on an old sofa with my husband across from our kind neighbor Ary, transfixed by the five cards that lay in a “t” formation on the coffee table in front of us. Travel is all about new experiences, right?
When I woke up that morning of March 18th, my first thought was, “Oh, I hope we get some sort of sign that staying in Australia is the right thing to do.” Looking back, I think I knew we should stay in Australia, but I was so scared to make the wrong decision that I distracted myself by looking for outside guidance. Meanwhile images of overcrowded hospitals, medical workers in full-body protective gear, and empty grocery store shelves loomed in the back of my mind. When Ary wandered by the common house to wish us a good morning, I know she sensed the tension in my voice. She generously offered to conduct a tarot card reading for us, and I didn’t hesitate to agree.
Jay and I had each taken turns slowly shuffling the deck of tarot cards as if they would either come to life or spontaneously combust at any moment. Initially it reminded me of my middle school sleepovers when my friends and I would pull out the Ouija board and ask now-trivial, then-profound questions about our hobbies, friends, and boys. As I attempted to re-stack the deck, a card fell onto the floor at my feet. “It looks like this card wants to be chosen,” I said with a half smile, and I placed it on the table. I glanced up at Ary’s smile and then looked over to our kids playing peacefully with pillows and old board games in the corner of the small basement room in the common house.
Turns out the card that fell from the deck was a travel card, and it was placed in the position that represented “What is needed for resolution”. Ary recited the card’s significance from the Osho Zen Tarot book. It focused on the journey and not necessarily the destination. It said to embrace the new, remain open, and not to struggle or plan too much. And the number on the card was eight, which is Jay’s lucky number.
Later that morning we contacted the Australian Immigration Office to figure out a plan for remaining in Australia legally beyond our current travel visas. Then Jay and I created a “6 months in Australia” budget to diligently plan if and how staying here longer-term would be financially possible.
I finally got out for a run late that afternoon. It had been raining on and off throughout the day, and the pavement was still damp and the soil spongy. The town was quiet. The air was moist and fresh, and the low sun illuminated the wet leaves on the trees. Running up a hill near the eco-village I could see a wide swath of sky, and I spotted two very faint rainbows that lasted no more than a minute each. I was looking hard for them, and there they were.
As we watched the COVID-19 crisis escalate worldwide with terrifying swiftness, it just made sense to completely cancel our travels for the following reasons: 1. Why would we voluntarily fly halfway around the world with our kiddos when so many countries were advising against travel and airlines were slashing routes by the hour? 2. Why would we hop on a plane and potentially contribute to the spread of the virus and put ourselves and others at risk? We didn’t want to add to the chaos. 3. We were really enjoying our time at the eco-village in Denmark and in Australia overall. We felt settled and safe here.
That evening I cancelled our Air New Zealand flights to Los Angeles. We were staying. Thousands of miles from family and all that’s familiar to us. This trip has always been four Sparrows on an adventure, and this would be the next chapter of our journey.
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Final Answer?
Not 48 hours later, on March 20th, we were face to face with urgent news banners on our iPhones informing us that the U.S. State Department had issued a Global Level 4 Health Advisory due to COVID-19. We learned that our government was advising “U.S. citizens who live in the United States should arrange for immediate return to the United States, unless they are prepared to remain abroad for an indefinite period.” In that moment the Pacific Ocean that separated us from home suddenly felt as though it had bottomed out.
It was just enough to unravel the confidence in our decision to stay that we had spent the past week building. Our government was telling us to return home. “What should we do?” Jay asked me. It was his turn to pose the question. The Legos clicked and clacked from across the room. My coffee was cold.
Later that morning one of the eco-village families offered their empty three-bedroom house to us for a week while they were self isolating in Perth after a trip to Bali. A three-bedroom house with appliances and books and craft supplies and space! If this wasn’t the universe screaming at me to just get a grip and stay put, I don’t know what was.
So we moved in the next day. We called our travel insurance company again to ask more questions. We FaceTimed with our family in the U.S. and the U.K. We kept building Lego towers and going for walks with our kids.
We stayed in that lovely home on the eco-village for 10 nights. On March 25th, Australian state borders closed, and on March 31st, we packed up our family and travelled back up to Perth ahead of regional borders closing within Western Australia. We decided to head to Perth to be closer to more medical facilities, more grocery stores, and a major airport, plus we were able to find a comfortable self-contained rental home in which we could stay settled for at least one month.
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As we pulled into the driveway of our rental home in Perth for the first time, I was oddly calm. On the five-hour drive from Denmark, Chloe sang her favorite songs from the movie “Frozen” on repeat. Jay and I composed a list of “Perth Positivity Projects” which included personal goals for the time we knew we’d be increasingly homebound. Camden napped on and off. We were together; we were healthy; and we were ready to hunker down. And as I tucked our kids in that night, a few reflections came to my weary mind.
First, I’m convinced that we were in Denmark, Australia, in March 2020 for a reason. There was, (and still is), a greater plan for our family to have found ourselves in one of the most peaceful and naturally beautiful environments during this time. With just enough civilization to ward off loneliness, endless scenic spots to ground us, and the eco-village community whose wisdom and support helped us to see our own blind spots, Denmark was a true blessing.
Second, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for our kids’ perspective. Throughout our frantic decision making, our kids effortlessly and unknowingly reminded me to live in the present and not waste energy borrowing theoretical pain and suffering from the future. Their zest for life and contentment with simple pleasures helped pull me out of mental spirals and feelings of hopelessness. Whether it’s building epic Lego castles or picking fresh figs, we try to meet our kids where they are, and allowing myself to be drawn into their world is healing and magical.
Third, I was proud of myself and Jay for tackling a rapid fire series of tough decisions in a developing narrative. I’m an indecisive person by nature, and when COVID-19 had us making decisions based on our own health and safety, I was scared. So although I was exhausted from the process, hopefully I will deposit this experience into my personal resiliency bank and be stronger because of it.
Lastly, it’s all relative. What our family experienced in March was a couple of weeks of mental chaos and fear. We drank too much coffee and lost too much sleep. We let looming uncertainty poison our focus. But we are infinitely grateful and humbled to be in a safe home in a safe city, and every evening we pray for those who are not.
So what’s next for us? We’ve committed to enjoying our time in Perth as much as possible while abiding by all of the safety measures in place. We are taking the time to regroup, slow down, and focus on what’s really important. And thanks to generous friends and neighbors, we continue to hone our Lego building skills and are enjoying some new children’s books.
The back window of our rental home faces west, and every evening we are treated to a spectacularly unique sunset as the horizon glows soft and then deep with vibrant oranges, pinks, reds, purples, and golds. It literally stops me in my tracks and reminds me that each day is utterly unique and holds the potential for beauty and positivity and gratitude, even in these uncertain times.
Below Image: Sunset view from our Airbnb in Perth.
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18 thoughts on “Making Family Travel Decisions Amidst COVID-19”
The sunsets are amazing in. One night recently it looked like the sky was on fire, so beautiful.
I loved this post, you took us with you on your journey through major decisions for your family. I was surprised to find out that you had your entire year all planned out with lodging and flights (I think Jay mentioned that in an interview). Do you have an idea how many hours of planning went into this?
We had a similar feeling when we got the notice from the USA “come home or stay where you are indefinitely” It really made the situation all the more real.
Thanks, Bonnie! We had three months of travel all booked when we left home in September 2019, so starting in November 2019 we began planning on a rolling basis. When COVID-19 hit, we had already planned our next 30 days of travel and accommodation. Such a crazy time this is! I hope you are keeping well! 🙂
Quick decisions, it’s tough, we bunkered out of nyc around the same time you first got news. Our family vacation in November is still up in the air but I highly doubt it’s going to happen
Thanks, Alexandra. Sounds like you had to make some hurried family decisions, too. Keep well!
Wow such a difficult position to be in! I hope you’re ok.
This are very strange times, no one imagined it could go this far
Thanks, Serena. We are all navigating this the best we can! Take care!
Loved this post. Thank you for sharing! 🙂
Hi Hardik! Thanks for reading! I hope you are keeping well. 🙂
Very nice post. These are tough times. The stories that come out of this experience will inspiring and definitely give you something to blog / talk about for a while!. I got stuck in an airport for 2-days and its till a topic of conversation. I hope you are all ok and stay safe!
Thanks, Chandra! Stay safe. 🙂
Wow, what an adventure for you and the family! Covid has changed countless lives, but I am glad you all were able to roll with the changing environment. In mid-February we knew that Covid had begun to change our world when flights to China were canceled and our planned Spring Break trip to Beijing was not going to happen. We now hope for a future visit to the Great Wall.💕
Thanks, Michelle. It’s certainly a crazy time. We hope you make it to Beijing eventually! Stay safe. 🙂
Thanks for sharing! We were away as well and had another month planned, but with the government warning to return home and the borders closing quickly, we had to make a quick choice and decided to return to Canada. Part of me wishes we had stayed though! It’s got to be tough for you guys, but glad you’re safe!
Hi Erin. Thanks for reading and for sharing your story. Sometimes all we can do is make the best decisions based on the information we have at the time. This pandemic is exceptionally crazy! I’m sure it’s comforting to be in your own home! Stay safe! 🙂
Thanks for sharing! I couldn’t imagine being in a different country when this started. You had to make some tough decisions quickly! Kudos to you!
Thanks, Alycia! We are very fortunate to be in a safe place. Stay well yourself! 🙂
Your story is incredible and based on how things have panned out here at home, you probably made the right decision.
Thank you. It was a tough decision but looking back, we feel that it was the right one.