South Korea Blues (written during March '20)

Mr. Choo loves Gary Moore. He says this over and over again (his limited English lexicon dense with Blues trivia) as we hike through Lake Oksan preserve with my husband and daughter. My 2-month-old baby bobs against my chest in her carrier, sleeping quietly. Too quietly. I obsessively check on her--adjust her face, watch her nostrils flare, lightly flick her rosebud lips to make sure she's still breathing--when I really should be focused on my footing. The precarious switchbacks twist and turn, until we finally see a sliver of shoreline from our high elevation. This vista makes me sad. Gary Moore makes me sad. The blue water and pine trees smell like Lake Superior. Mr. Choo softly humming "Still Got the Blues" conjures dreams long laid to rest: an ex-fiancé, a home of my own, a violin hanging dusty and dormant in our South Korean apartment. I want to say more about Moore, thinking about his Red Strat, his signature Gibson Les Paul, or the damn sad way he drank himself to death in Spain, but instead, I simply say my favorite song is "The Loner."

My husband tells me our daughter's eyes are blue. The sky is blue. Her Baby Bjorn infant carrier is blue. Her body at birth, seconds old, was bluer than blue. But right now, in the piercing LED lights of our tiny apartment, he reassures me that the pale blue shadows cast under her eyes and across her cheeks are NOT blue. I'm on high alert. Our baby has been diagnosed with two holes in her heart. As we practice watchful waiting to see if they'll close naturally, we are supposed to look for signs of congestive heart failure. Every sneeze and sweaty feed is suspect. I read about cyanosis. Daily, I inspect her lips, earlobes, and finger tips, afraid to discover a purple tinge. These were not the Baby Blues I was expecting.

COVID-19 has chased us into the woods. Little more than an hour away from us in Daegu, thousands of people are ill and the city is in lockdown. We are lucky, and in the days to come--as the world succumbs to the virus--we will realize we are even luckier than most. While having the second highest number of cases (for the moment), we are not ordered to self-isolate. Businesses are slow and schools, churches, and gyms are temporarily closed, but people move freely. They breathe hard through their medical masks as they pass us on the trail. Old men and women reach out for our baby girl, so I pivot quickly, shielding her with my body while holding up my hand to stop curious fingers from lifting her blanket. Koreans are crazy for babies. Having the 8th lowest birth rate in the world, a baby out in public is a minor celebrity. Men babytalk, women "kidnap," and shy children sidle up to you until they're practically sitting in your lap. I'm reminded of an old memory, my first son, 18-months-old, in Lebanon. A strange lady had plucked him out of his father's arms and walked away with him. When she disappeared around a sandstone corner and I asked who she was, my then husband simply replied, "I have no idea, but I'm sure she'll bring him back." COVID-19 doesn't seem to be able to curb our primal instinct to reach out for a baby.

Self-isolation is nothing for a new mother. Since the end of December, I've mostly been home alone during the day. With no car, limited Hangul, and a young infant, my lockdown came early. But I think of the dramatic changes the world is now experiencing as I watch the Louvre shutter, NYC finally go to sleep, and major sports events postpone and cancel. Moore's "Parisienne Walkways" have silenced, New York hasn't been this still and somber since 9/11, and the Olympics haven't been disrupted in such a way since WWII. I think of this time of watchful waiting. In anticipating an illness, every symptom, every small speck on an x-ray becomes a harbinger of catastrophe. A person sneezes in the grocery store now and everyone looks up. A baby gasps for air and both lungs must have collapsed. And as I watch and wait--for the virus to pass, for the holes to close--I know I'll never forget this time when the whole world held its breath and turned blue.