It’s the End of the World as We Know it (And I Feel Fine)
– R.E.M.
The pandemic changed everything.
Almost as soon as Robie announced he was thinking of retiring “sometime in the future, in the next few years, eventually but not soon,” I booked a trip to Costa Rica for what was supposed to be the start of a five-year plan to visit potential retirement places. But before our plane ever left the ground, the world shut down, and we were stranded at home.
One day we were busily going about our lives racing to the gym, making dinner plans with friends, running a list of never-ending errands, marking special events and scheduling holiday get-togethers. Then suddenly all that scheduling, marking, making, planning, racing and running came to a screeching halt. The activities that we believed made us who we were disappeared instantly. Weddings were postponed, vacations cancelled, office buildings and schools closed, jobs evaporated, lives were cut short. While we waited for the worst to be over, the relentless noise of traffic outside stopped, and the hum of human activity was silent. Birds chirped louder from the rooftops and the racket of squirrels chasing each other around trees seemed deafening. People went outdoors to take long walks around the neighborhood and bicyclists filled the empty lanes. For the first time in years Robie and I relaxed in our backyard without music to drown the noise of a busy street.
I remember bits and pieces from the first part of 2020 like something out of a dream, hazy and indistinct. At a client meeting in Colorado someone mentioned rumors coming out of China that sounded like another bird flu epidemic. At the time, I recalled the spring of 2009 when Robie and I sailed into Cancun after a swine flu plague ravaged the area’s tourism. As we strolled empty streets, sat in vacuous restaurants and looked longingly at closed stores, the usually vibrant beachfront town was subdued. All except the bartenders who were grateful for any tips after going weeks without work.
“What happens if this new strain from China crosses into North Korea?” someone around the Denver coffeeshop asked. “I can’t imagine their hospitals have the ability to handle a serious outbreak.” Little did we know that none of the world’s health care systems could. Because the outbreaks we’d experienced before hadn’t prepared us for what was coming.
As the virus spread rapidly outside Asia to Europe and North America it seemed like an airborne disease. And with another sales trip planned, I called the airline worried that being trapped inside a recirculating capsule wasn’t particularly wise. But the helpful lady in customer service wouldn’t allow me to change my ticket since “all flights are operating as usual,” she said.
“Even the ones going in and out of China?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” came the instant reply. Because, you know, why should the airlines try to avoid ground zero of a deadly outbreak?
I’ve since determined that Gordon Gecko was wrong. Greed isn’t good; in America, greed is sacred.
In the 1990s, the U.S. carriers didn’t want to fund additional security at the airports afraid people would use it as a reason not to fly. Instead, they managed a lax screening system designed for speed. Yet despite their responsibility for nineteen terrorists hijacking four commercial airplanes with little more than box cutters, American taxpayers shoveled out billions to shore up air travel in the months following 9/11 only to see those same carriers retain the naming rights to massive sports arenas in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Denver and Los Angeles. So, if the biggest attack on U.S. soil in 60 years taught the airlines anything, it was that there was easy money to be had from the government. And once the pandemic hit, they held out their hands like Oliver Twist. “Please, sir, we want some more.”
In the end, I flew out on my sales trip and quarantined in my hotel since there was no telling what might have been swirling around the cabin air alongside me. Because regardless of the airline’s policy I owed it to my clients to try and keep them safe. Two days later I returned home surprised to find Robie at the front door in the middle of the afternoon announcing that his company was shuttering the office and forcing everyone to work from home.
It was temporary, he said. But once the corporate bean counters realized how much money they could save by not paying rent for a penthouse suite in an office tower centrally located at the intersection of two major arteries, they closed the office permanently. As an added bonus, the firm could now stop paying frivolous expenses for coffee in the breakroom, copier toner, paper, employee birthday cakes and breakfast tacos at the weekly staff meeting. For accountants the pandemic seemed too good to be true.
In March 2020, things unraveled at an alarming rate. At the company where I worked specializing in vacations at five-star luxury beach resorts, sales fell off a cliff like a line of suicidal lemmings. Even before that last, fruitless sales trip my pay had been cut and the instant the CARES act was announced, I got the call declaring a general furlough. The CEO, a former bean counter himself, quickly realized he didn’t have to pay his employees if the government was willing to. So you understand my amusement a year later when the daily headlines quoted company bigwigs whining about their inability to hire employees because everyone was being paid to stay home.
With the world shut down and our trip to Costa Rica postponed indefinitely, Robie sequestered himself inside his new home office while I filled the days looking for inspiration in HGTV’s House Hunters International, International Living magazine and researching digital nomad visas. Then as outdoor, socially distant activities were once again possible, one of Robie’s golf buddies started talking about moving to Italy. Late in 2019 the couple had taken a reconnaissance trip to Florence and returned home in time to get stuck indoors working jigsaw puzzles with the rest of us. And now they were ready to return. Except they weren’t selling their house or getting residents visas. Instead, they were heading back to Italy for another three-month stay and planning similar trips for the foreseeable future. That’s when I realized their definition of moving was different than mine.
By the time I was twelve I’d lived in six states. After high school I went to five colleges in five years. As a young professional I moved four times including a stint in Mexico. After marrying Robie, we lived in seven homes across three states, not counting the eighteen months we spent sailing around the Caribbean. So, suffice it to say I know a little something about moving. But just because I think the process involves boxes, rental vans and trailers doesn’t mean everyone does.
As the world slowly adjusted to the new normal, Robie and I were no closer to knowing what to do in retirement. And following more than a year of lost time we could hear the loud ticking of the 60 Minutes stopwatch hovering above our lives and knew it was time to make a few hard and fast decisions. Pulling up an outdated wish list, Robie and I sat down one Saturday afternoon to veto retirement destinations.
I crossed off Panama since it seemed like the new Florida located at the opposite end of the Caribbean. Robie nixed Greece due to the language barrier, and despite neither of us having visited the country, we cut Ecuador and mutually agreed to remove Belize since it lay in the path of hurricanes. Robie axed Italy and France for the high cost of living and I eliminated Portugal so we could concentrate on Spain in the Iberian Peninsula. Soon we were left with only three of our original ten options.
And at the top of that list sat Costa Rica.