Tony receives an email notification that our mid-July flights from Paris to the US have been canceled.
It's quite a shock as my everyday goal has been to return to France, and now I don't have a flight home.
How quickly life's circumstances change.
We regroup, replan on a what's app video call.
Tony is stoic as he explains how he will need to fly to Amsterdam to get home and needs to travel to Bordeaux and how will he manage four pieces of luggage and two carryons? When I pull my pajama shirt up over my head, he knows I'm stressed, he knows I'm sad we will not be reunited in France, and he knows I'm overwhelmed by the last three months of separation.
Finally, his stoic demeanor shifts. A nervous laugh emerges and he says, "I know."
Tony who has remained so resilient, so optimistic, finally acknowledges the imperfect situation.
This is much more comforting than all the positivity he's kept while under extremely strict quarantine in France, while trying to convince me that the curve on CV19 is lowering and that the whole pandemic is almost over (which I always knew wasn't).
~~
I look back on all the positivity I once exuded through my daughter's nightmarish and still pending divorce. "It's going to be okay," I said more than once, more than twice and thrice.
It's never what she only needed to hear, and when the day came that I let down the positive pretense and just said, "You're right, this sucks," I'm sure she felt the same comfort I had desperately needed from Tony.
It's quite a shock as my everyday goal has been to return to France, and now I don't have a flight home.
How quickly life's circumstances change.
We regroup, replan on a what's app video call.
Tony is stoic as he explains how he will need to fly to Amsterdam to get home and needs to travel to Bordeaux and how will he manage four pieces of luggage and two carryons? When I pull my pajama shirt up over my head, he knows I'm stressed, he knows I'm sad we will not be reunited in France, and he knows I'm overwhelmed by the last three months of separation.
Finally, his stoic demeanor shifts. A nervous laugh emerges and he says, "I know."
Tony who has remained so resilient, so optimistic, finally acknowledges the imperfect situation.
This is much more comforting than all the positivity he's kept while under extremely strict quarantine in France, while trying to convince me that the curve on CV19 is lowering and that the whole pandemic is almost over (which I always knew wasn't).
~~
I look back on all the positivity I once exuded through my daughter's nightmarish and still pending divorce. "It's going to be okay," I said more than once, more than twice and thrice.
It's never what she only needed to hear, and when the day came that I let down the positive pretense and just said, "You're right, this sucks," I'm sure she felt the same comfort I had desperately needed from Tony.
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