Convergence Theatre

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34: Honeymoon In Morocco

The panic and mass shutdown of non-essential travel didn't start until after my husband and I got back from our honeymoon. Months ago, we had made plans to elope in our apartment, plan out a honeymoon/vacation to Morocco, and tell our families about our marriage before we left for our trip. When we left everything was fine, and there were so few cases of Coronavirus, that the city was business as usual. Morocco also had very few cases, less than all of Canada. So we left with a false sense of security that helped us take time off and go ahead with our honeymoon.

Since we're work-from-home, self-employed freelancers, taking time off without the stress of saying no to work and losing income is a rare luxury for us. We had an incredible time, and collected so many fantastic memories, until our last few days, when Corona-related tension rose back home.

First, there was the news of the economy crashing because of Corona, and Tom Hanks and Sophie Trudeau getting Corona. But it didn't actually feel real until news spread that Morocco was no longer accepting flights to and from Canada and 25 other countries.

With our eyes on social media, and several messages to the embassy later we found out we were still going home on the flight we booked months ago. But I barely slept the night before because I truly believed we were months, maybe even years away from going home.

We managed to get on that flight, the last commercial flight from Casablanca to Canada. Then, we took the connecting flight from Montreal to Toronto, after being told to self-isolate. But the self-isolation period has had this surreal calm to it. My husband and I still get work from our clients, I keep working on the book I'm writing, and my family brought us tons of food…but life still feels so uncertain and slow.

My husband keeps telling me we'll be fine, everything's fine, we're the lucky ones, but I don't really know how long it will stay that way.

Art inspired by this confession…

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