the transition — Summer of Rove

As I lay curled up in an empty center row of our plane to London, the kids asleep in the rows ahead of me, it occurred to me that the months leading up to this — the actual physical move from one country to another — were a little like being in labor. Excitement, terror, dread, anticipation, and regular intervals of pain, all mixed into one dizzying whirl that at turns flew by and dragged on. I turned the screen off on the seatback in front of me, darkening the tracking map on which we were a tiny blip heading eastbound over the Atlantic, and tried to take deep breaths under my mask. For the first time in decades, sleep on the redeye came easily.

New dawn, new horizon: all the clichés apply

We spent our first 10 days in Bristol in an Airbnb. The U.S. was designated an ‘amber’ country — as in the yellow part of a stop light — so we were required to self-isolate for 10 days. We had to pre-book mandatory (and shockingly pricey) Day 2 and Day 8 PCR tests in order to enter the country, with the option of even pricier Day 5 tests if we wanted to be released from quarantine early. In reality, Day 5 was Day 6 because the day we arrived at 8 a.m. was considered Day 0. And to make things even more confusing, even if your Day 5 tests are negative and you’re fully vaccinated like I was, the Day 8 tests are still required. The stress of doing all this mental math before we flew, checking on ever-changing restrictions, finding a testing company using the UK government’s indecipherable online search tool, and shelling out close to $1,400 for our tests, may have taken a few months off my life.

I’d signed up for a grocery delivery service and booked a slot a week in advance, so we at least could spend our days of isolation in the company of a well-stocked refrigerator. How did we while away those first days alongside our new friends Cadbury, Soreen and Weetabix?

Fingernails were polished. Calls, so very many calls, from government test & trace, were received. (They follow a script and ask you to confirm you’re self-isolating in the place where you promised to self-isolate. One caller told me someone would be coming by to check on us, but the promised visitor never arrived.) The boxes of our required Day 2 and Day 8 tests — self-swab at home affairs — were used as building blocks by my engineering-minded son. The children were bench-pressed by their father a few times in an attempt at exercise.

Rapid lateral-flow tests, used widely here, take less than 30 minutes and bear an uncanny resemblance to a pregnancy test.

Our Airbnb host, Kathy, had failed to mention until days before our arrival that her house was in the midst of a massive roofing project. So our main contact with the outside world during these early days was listening to the team of roofers who spent each day working just above our heads and on the scaffolding that encased the house, breaking tile after tile and listening to Michael Jackson on a boom box.

The UK reminded incoming travelers that outdoor exercise during quarantine is strictly prohibited unless you have a garden or yard. There was a massive, very pretty yard just downstairs from us; our kitchen windows overlooked it. But before our trip Kathy the Airbnb host wrote me an apologetic note explaining that we were not allowed to use it because it “belonged to another property.” As it turned out, the property belonged to her, so we had the pleasure of watching from the kitchen as Kathy had her daily al fresco cups of tea and glasses of wine.

Unplanned eye contact with a roofer from our bathroom one morning, thanks to a curtain mishap

The view from our Airbnb: scaffolding and a garden we weren’t allowed to use. Can you spot Kathy’s foot?

We’d all had so many Covid tests before, from NYC to the Dominican Republic: brain scrapers, nostril ticklers, sneeze inducers, tests so gentle I worried they hadn’t gotten a usable sample. But the UK tests required some adjustment. Here they swab the tonsil area first, and then go up the nose. The instructions on the home tests tell you not to eat for 30 minutes beforehand, which I didn’t understand at all — we had never been asked to fast before a test in the States — until I swabbed Max’s throat on Day 8 and his entire breakfast ended up on the floor a few seconds later.

The only upside of our test situation was that the lone test dropbox for the company we’d chosen was on the other side of the city, allowing us a sanctioned reason to break out and do some undercover exploring. Bristol felt alive and colorful — technicolor houses, vibrant street art, bustling parks and distinct neighborhoods, each with its own flavor. We saw gritty, fancy, funky, dirty, gorgeous, historic, brand-new. We passed restaurants, bakeries, shops, cafes and pubs, all buzzing with activity and teasing us with sourdough loaves, perfect rows of fresh strawberries and foam-topped pints being consumed by happy people enjoying the rare heat wave. We made mental notes on the many places we would visit when we were no longer under house arrest.

Street art on the long walk to drop off our tests

If the buildup to our move was labor, then quarantine felt like those blurry first days at home with the baby. You’re exhausted and exhilarated, and will waver wildly between the two for a very long time. No matter how much you’ve read or researched, you feel unprepared for this transition. The confidence you do possess is sidelined as you’re keenly aware of the infinite knowledge you do not possess. Unlike the small changes that happen bit by bit before our eyes, without us noticing — hair growing, a waistline expanding, a child’s face maturing — this is a drastic shift that immediately engages every cell and nerve ending.

It was strange to enter a period of time I know will demarcate phases of my life (before the move vs. after the move) in the same way as my children’s births and my father’s death. My world’s axis had just shifted, which was as terrifying as it was thrilling.

And then it was over. All tests negative, quarantine lifted, no more calls from the NHS making sure I was sitting indoors watching Kathy drink her beverages. Soon after our purgatory ended, we became the butt of a cosmic joke when the UK lifted the quarantine restriction on vaccinated Americans and their children under 12. [Insert exasperated profanity here.] Our first order of business was to walk to one of our new city’s many parks. Watching the kids stride out onto a green expanse under a bright English sky, I had the distinct feeling that at this moment, we were exactly where we needed to be.