Today is Saturday. What a wild ride. BC and I are on our way back to the states from Iceland. We were able to hop onto our 5:05pm flight from Keflavik airport to San Francisco via Seattle. In the past 72 hours, I’ve woken up to a text message that Trump banned travel from Europe to the United States, that schools across the United States are shutting down for anywhere from four days to four weeks, and that I will have to self quarantine for 14 days after returning back to the United States—assuming that I get through the screening process with no surprises.
Seventy-two hours before that—Monday morning. BC, Edward, and I woke up to an unexpected blanket of snow covering our front porch, car, and—most notably—the long, winding, private driveway leading to a quiet, country road. This stretch of country road was a ways away from the national highway. Desperate not to miss our ice cave tour, we gave ourselves two hours to attempt the supposed hour and a half drive to the tour meeting spot.
We ended up spending 2 hours stuck in a ditch, after just barely making it to the end of the driveway.
One snow plough followed by one emergency tow truck came to our rescue. After we were wedged free, the emergency vehicle escorted us along the country road until, sure enough, we needed to be pulled out of another snow bank. In the end, we made our tour (albeit, a tour four hours later).
On Tuesday, we got caught in a blizzard on our way to the north of Iceland. We managed to squeeze into what ended up being the last escorted convoy from Rey∂arfjö∂ur to Egilssta∂ir in what must have been a mere 3 feet of visibility in whiteout conditions. In Egilssta∂ir, we pulled up to a blast-from-the-past 50s Americana diner run by a Spanish-speaking Romanian woman to regroup over a shared BLT and a heaping side of curly fries.
With the road to Akureyri closed, we were forced to stay in town and find available accommodation. With my swollen belly, I half wondered if the only accommodation we’d find is a manger filled with Icelandic sheep and three magi led by a North star. Luckily, this wasn’t the case; we found a reasonably-priced, stylish, modern AirBnB to settle in for the night. We comforted ourselves with late night gas station ice cream cones, cheesy matching Icelandic souvenirs, and a FRIENDS marathon Netflix binge.
The next morning, Wednesday, we fretted over being able to get back to town (a 9-hour drive away) in order to catch Edward’s flight by Friday and our flight by Saturday. Was the blizzard going to let up? Were roads going to close again? We decided to scrap all of our plans in the north and back track, clockwise, around Ring Road to play it safe and hopefully make it back to civilization with no further setbacks. We set off to re-drive the several hours that we had just driven the night before.
On Thursday morning, we awoke to the news of U.S. borders closing Friday at midnight due to coronavirus. Edward's flight was scheduled to take off before the cutoff, but our flight was the very next Saturday. Would we be locked out of the U.S.? For how long? Where in Iceland would we stay? What would happen to my job? BC’s job?
We had no idea what to do nor if there was anything we could do. As the day unfolded, bits of information were fed to us via the internet, Icelandair customer service reps, social media, and friends and family back home: U.S. citizens would be permitted to return. Thursday and Friday flights from Iceland to the States were not cancelled... but what about Saturday?. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 grew in Iceland from 50 to 150 in three days. Mass school closures were happening in Ohio, Maryland, Seattle, San Francisco… but what about Oakland? Not Oakland, but yes my school, for four days. OK, yes Oakland, til April 5th, but what about my school—still only four days? Overnight, twenty-six countries had been added to the “Level 3” list by the CDC, meaning travelers from these infected areas would need to self quarantine upon arrival to the States. Iceland was on that list. Really, Iceland? There are more confirmed cases in the Bay Area alone compared to the entire nation of Iceland, and we had been mostly isolated due to the nature (har har) of tourism in this country. There are more people living in the city of Oakland than in all of Iceland. I don’t feel sick, but could I be an asymptomatic carrier? What if I get sick? How do I self quarantine? Will we make it past airport screening? If we don’t, what will happen to us? What if BC makes it through and I don’t—what would happen to me? We haven’t been home in over a week, we don’t have supplies to last 14 days at our house. I’m going to go stir crazy. I won’t be able to make my prenatal appointments and I just started my third trimester. Am I going to lose pay due to missing work? Am I going to zero out my sick days I had been saving for when the baby arrives?
Well. These were the roughest parts of our trip so far. Now, I’m sitting on the plane back to the States with a plane full of dazed Americans, also on edge by the global turn of events. Over night, BC and I lost 23% of our invested assets. I don’t know when I’ll be back to work, to what capacity, and whether I’ll be able to continue collecting pay.
That’s where I’ll leave that bit of the trip. There’s the whole other side to it still, though, one that also deserves to be memorialized.
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Moments of Clarity
Last Friday, the morning of our departure for our babymoon in Iceland, BC and I started the morning by grading stacks of precalculus quizzes. I had run out of steam in the days leading up to our trip amidst the frenzy of the daily grind. I had at first resigned to the fact that I’d need to pack a couple of class sets of quizzes to be graded and my laptop to submit grades and create 5 blocks worth of lesson plans while on my trip. Thanks to the coronavirus outbreak and cancelled field trips, I already needed an extra day of subbing than I had originally planned. Luckily, BC and I found ourselves with just enough spare time in that morning to crank through quiz questions on the unit circle and algebraic operations that I would be able to stacks of grading behind.
We caught our flight out to Iceland without incident, save for my insatiable hunger for hefty carb-loaded meals. We scarfed down ‘asa-ra’ (breakfast ramen) at SFO and loaded up again on a mountainous platter of fish and chips on our way out of SeaTac. I still managed to finish my $12 soggy airplane sandwich on the flight across the Atlantic.
We arrived Keflavik airport for our third time at 5am on Saturday, a full hour earlier than our scheduled arrival. Edward, already in Iceland, had left his AirBnB at 4am to come get us. Not one hour into our Icelandic excursion, we catch a glimpse of the northern lights just before daybreak. As we drove into Reykjavik, past the lumpy moss and snow covered volcanic rocky plain, I was struck by a familiar incredulous feeling I had the two previous times we had touched down in Iceland and made our way down Ring Road.
The first time we visited Iceland was in 2015. At that time, my mind was swirling with doubts and hopes that BC would finally propose to me. I’m not the type of girl to wait around for outdated conventions, but BC had said years ago that it was important to him that he would plan and execute an epic proposal ‘one day’ (presumably to me, but that this point I was no longer so sure). I figured I should patiently wait and let him have that moment. With each anniversary, season, and now passing day on this magical trip, my understanding turned to worn out patience, until it finally morphed into doubt. Did he want to marry me? Or was it time to move on?
More than halfway through our trip, BC found his perfect moment—a moment that, though at first seemed nearly too late, became the perfect moment for me, too. This long awaited shift in the trajectory of our lives was adorned with hilarity, adventure, and misadventure with our ragtag crew of wide-eyed young travelers throughout our 10-day stay.
Six weeks after that memorable trip, tragedy struck. My worldview darkened. I learned that dreams of bright futures are not inevitabilities. Loved ones can be wiped off of the earth today, tomorrow, even one minute from now. Our dream of a trip wasn’t destiny being fulfilled—it was happenstance, a mere coincidence that took place just in time for all of us to experience before one of us died.
Twelve month later—2016. BC and I dragged any loved ones who could be persuaded to this mysterious place of ‘ours’. Iceland felt extraterrestrial with its epic landscapes and freak forces of nature; it only seemed natural that MA would return here in spirit. Our return felt like our way of paying homage not only to his life, but to a moment in all of our lives when we still felt that the best in life was not only possible, but deserved. Our return to Iceland was bittersweet, and we were met with small miracles: the clouds parting just in time for our wedding ceremony; fireworks erupting during our final toasts of gratitude; serendipitous run-ins with all the right people at all the right moments. And one more: Edward brought the banquet room to cheers with a prophecy: “Iceland 2020 for the baby shower??”
Four years later than that, now, 2020. BC, Edward, and I return to our little paradise, this time with one more in tow. It feels important to make this pilgrimage in the last days that BC and I spend together as “just us”, and even more important that we share this trip with a friend who was at our side during each of our previous trips.
This trip was the perfect cocktail sauce of nostalgia and new memories. We recreated important moments and captured it on camera. We explored new sites: a diamond studded beach, a cave of infinite hues of blue, a plane wreck, and many new restaurants. In our conversations about how much had changed in the past five years and wondering what is to come in the coming few, we three grew closer still. BC admitted that he and I are different people now than we were then—as individuals and in our relationship. New responsibilities, new priorities, and life experience eventually etched crags into our personalities like the incessant drip of glacial melt on volcanic rock. In the five years since our first trip, my heart sank deeper and deeper as one friend, then one student, then a young family member, then one elderly family member, and then two more students were laid to rest. In the five years since our first trip, I’d been diagnosed with first panic disorder and anxiety and later with depression. In that time, I’d also changed jobs, in some ways for the better and in some ways not, but matured fittingly throughout the process. Together, BC and I made a life commitment to each other and to each other’s families, supported each other through loss, uncertainty, and tumult, bought a house, and are now preparing for a family.
From the passenger seat on our eighth and final day of this trip, as I stared out at the familiar mossy, lumpy landscape on the way to airport, I broke down into silent sobs. I am only one in millions of tourists who have visited and fallen in love with the country’s exotic beauty; Iceland is only one of over four dozen countries I’ve visited. Still, this place touches my soul in a unique way. Returning to Iceland time after time is emotional and even overwhelming for me not because of what Iceland is, but because of what it’s come to represent to me. With each visit, I learned a little more about the perfect randomness of life. I’ll never know why heart-achingly incredible and horrible moments strike as they do, but I can’t numb myself to either anymore. This moment, I thought to myself, is all we have. These moments may never amount to anything. But in this moment, I am happy. In this moment, I am grateful for BC and for the hope of a child together.
Thank you for another important journey, Iceland. ’Til we meet again.
