Woburn, MA – May 2020

As I wrote last week, at the end of 2019 I moved back to the US after living in Jordan for four years. I moved in with my sister and other housemates in Medford, MA, a suburb of Boston. About two months later, I married R (in Boston!), the pandemic upended everything, and R and I got stuck on opposite sides of the planet when, after our wedding, he traveled back to Amman just before Jordan indefinitely shut down all commercial flights in and out. I wrote this piece in the early days of COVID when we’d been separated for six weeks.

I am impatient to have R with me in America.

I spent the past while being with R in Jordan, and missing America. Now I’m living in America and missing R.

This morning I drove out to Horn Pond and walked around it. It was one of those shimmering unbelievable mornings. I listened to Tallest Man on Earth on the way over: When the Bird Sees the Solid Ground. The guitar parts jump and skitter around and the trees shine in the sideways light.