facing fears

As we drive through Margate we are slowed down by road works. Sergio looks at me, "it just feels like any other day, but it's not," He said. "Look at these guys, still mending roads, just like nothing has happened."

I know he's terrified. In the back of the car, his girlfriend Lucia is sharing her sultanas with Lux. They are holding hands and Lux is singing in her raucous way. Lucia is terrified too.

I pull into the airport drop off at about noon. Usually it's impossible to be able to stop in those spots and there's always some guy in a high-vis trying to wave you on. Today there was no high-vis, everyone was stoic and quiet. 

We hug each other. 

"If you can't  fly out of Melbourne within 3 days, I say, you get straight back on a plane to Hobart." "They'll tell you that you can't because you'll have to quarantine for 2 weeks. You give them my number, you tell them you have a place to stay. You tell them that you have a cabin to self isolate in. Tell them to call me, I'll tell them." 

They are trying to get to Uruguay. They haven't been home in over a year and a half, and now, desperately far from home they are throwing everything down to try to get out in time. They are worried it's too late. Chilean flights got cancelled this morning. No more flights. There are rumours that the airlines are going under. Nobody knows what is gossip and what is true. 

All they have left is to fly to Melbourne and try to badger airlines into getting them out, and if that doesn't work, pin all their hopes on the Uruguay consulate getting the group of  Uruguay nationals stranded in Melbourne out together. No one knows what's possible. No one knows what's happening.

On the one hand I hope that I don't see them next week. On the other, I do. 

After they walk into the terminal I sit in my car for 20 minutes. Lux and I share dried apples. No one waves me on. No one wants my parking spot. No one is pointing at the "5 minutes drop off sign."
I watch a four wheel drive pull up in front of me. A woman in a striped t-shirt gets out. She talks to the couple with large backpacks that get out of her back seat for a while. I wonder where they are going, I can tell she is having the same conversation Lucia, Sergio and I just had. These were her helpxers, or wwoofers, or workawayers. She is pointing at the ground. I feel like that was the bit where she said, "If you can't get out, you get back here." 

Across the world right now, people's ideas of how things were and how they were going to be is crumbling. People are stranded at airports. People are losing their jobs, people are eating rice and lentils and making their UHT milk last.

Sergio and Lucia worked as helpxers at Wanderland for nearly a month. They dug a swale and  helped build our goat house. Sergio, with his background in genetic biology has been unpacking the virus for us, explaining the ins and outs of virus transmission. Lucia has kept me entertained with her passionate intelligence, Lux adores her. We shared so many meals together and we watched the world unravel together. As the unravelling hastened they hurried to make plans, to sell their car, to get out while they still could. 

Lucia is a strong, confident feminist and this morning she cried. 

These are the kinds of stories all across the world right now. There is no great moral or message in today's post. It's just about a thing that happened and how much there is to feel and how many people there are to empathise with. For me, it's just further reminder to be kind, to give what you can and to hold each other close.