“Face masks are just like handcuffs - only ones you put on yourself!” 

A cardboard hand-lettered sign yelled at me. Held by a man whose face I did not see. 

We drove by too fast to see him. But his words continue to echo. 

I recently spent nearly six weeks in the US, visiting my parents in their 80s, at a critical juncture in their lives. And my son who just graduated from University. (I watched the livestream at 2am). 

They needed me. I felt very, very grateful to be able to have the opportunity. It involved first getting on a call-out list for unused vaccines and then securing a slot in managed isolation (which is now virtually impossible, raising deep moral questions, and inspiring a global petition).

I had anxiety dreams before I left. Felt like I was stepping into toxic air at LAX. I called my expat friends in NZ to share my first impressions. They viewed me as their guinea pig: a test case. 

The international terminals were so empty they were echo-ey. So many shops shuttered. I couldn’t help wondering who else was traveling and why? One I discovered was on her way to ‘visit friends’ but the guy across the aisle was traveling to be with a terminally ill family member.

I told my friends about my 11-hour layover in LA. About the square-shouldered lawyer who violated attorney/client privilege for a full hour, sharing personal details of her case with the entire airport lounge, her voice rising about the perspex partitions at her mini-desk. 

She was mask-less. They asked me if I felt safe. All I could say was I didn’t know yet. 

I told them I double-masked on the plane to Chicago because, despite the empty airport, the plane was packed. (And no, btw, I didn’t see any fistfights with flight attendants.)

I had hoped my travel plans might hit the sweet spot between getting vaccinated and a variant spike. But Delta (the variant, not the airline) muscled its way into the gap. Just as I boarded the plane out of Los Angeles, news came that the city was instituting an indoor mask order. So much for the “hot vax summer”. Clearly the country needed more than a 52% vaccination rate to enjoy that. On board, an announcement on the plane instructed us to keep on our in-mid-air-mandated masks “between sips and bites”. 

My first destination was the deep south, seeing family who live in a tourist city. I noticed the tour buses required face-coverings, but late-night walking tours didn’t. As a party destination, I saw plenty of “hen dos” (to use the Kiwi term): girls in matching t-shirts on multi-stooled pedal carts singing loudly, faces uncovered. I also witnessed lots of wobbling, warbling groups wending their way without masks through the streets in (quite possibly pestilent) posses. 

I even felt some mask confusion. Before the indoor mask ordinance went back into effect in that city too, I walked into one building with posted signs telling people to mask only if they were unvaccinated. Would I therefore be incorrectly labeling myself (and inviting misjudgment) if I put one on simply for protection? I then began questioning my thinking: was I just being cautious, or crossing over to being paranoid? The data (then) suggested very few breakthrough infections. 

I started to feel just a hint of the stress everyone else (who doesn’t live in NZ) has been experiencing, as countries have opened up and started to ease restrictions. In some cases, only to revert right back to them as the variant proved its virulence. 

Then, when two fully vaccinated family friends reported getting breakthrough infections, I questioned the official statistics I was reading and sadly started to scale back plans I’d made to see friends and family. 

We still ate at restaurants, but only outside. I stopped shopping. It wasn’t worth the risk to stock up on my usual supplies. I didn’t wear half of the (dressier) clothes I brought with me. For the celebrations I’d expected. 

I eventually did fly to the West Coast to visit my 84 year old father. It had been two years since I’d seen him, and he is now officially elderly. I got a Covid-19 test before boarding the plane, just to be safe. It felt a moral imperative. And I upgraded to a k95 mask for the journey. 

Once there, we ventured out a bit, but mainly into nature. At one beautiful park, we stopped to decipher a sign directing us to take an alternate path down to the shoreline. A couple walked past, scoffed and told us to ignore it. “It’s the federal government trying to manipulate us!”

Not everyone was like that. I promise. Plenty did follow the suggestions, and the science. But it was eye-opening to experience what it’s like to feel pressured/judged/mocked just for trying to stay safe. That said, glancing at some of the international headlines about New Zealand’s lockdown, now we all have a bit of a clue. 

Because I managed not to contract the virus, I was allowed back into NZ. Locked away in my precious spot in managed isolation, in a country some have described as a “gilded cage”, I tried to wrap my brain around the alternate realities I’d experienced. 

When family and friends in the US called, I described the military operation that’s been put in place to keep me and the rest of this country as safe as possible: nurses in full PPE conducting daily health checks and administering repeat Covid-19 tests. I had six in seven weeks, three after I landed. 

With a high-tech air filter right outside my door and in the elevator, as well as no indoor gym time, some of the gaps in this keeping-the-border-safe-system appear to have been corrected. That said, I can’t offer or comment on any escapee stories.

I admitted the highlight of my day was what I jokingly call my “ding-dong-ditch” meals, delivered in paper bags to my door where we (always masked) retrieved them; how I looked forward to what I laughingly described as my “prison-yard walk” around the (honestly very comfortable) hotel where I’d been placed; and how I felt truly relieved to be back in a country where things (despite or because of the lockdown) felt so much safer. 

But I also admitted wondering how long this can or will continue. How long will New Zealand remain shuttered? Some point to signals already being sent to the outside world, suggesting a new strategy. I and many others realise we will eventually have to learn how to be more cautious and more flexible.

There are people in high places working now to make some very hard decisions for this country. They’re weighing all the precautions we’ve taken in New Zealand and how many, or many more, they will continue to take. Experts are looking at what’s now happening in the US and all around the world, where the scales of “freedom” vs. “protection” are heavily tipped toward the former.  

As they carefully deliberate, I see agitation build. I’m not just talking about the mask-flouters. I’m talking about the hard-hit businesses and industries and the one million Kiwis stuck offshore, separated from family, from their home, indefinitely. I’ve seen some harsh judgments online about people who’ve dared to live internationally. Their situations either dismissed or derided.

The priority right now is getting everyone in this country vaccinated, which has been a source of much anxiety. Around the world, many are getting their booster shots already. There’s also the critical question about when kids in this country will be able to get jabs. And then there’s a shortage of ICU beds. All of these issues need to be factored in.

But now, with a wider perspective of what’s been happening in the world, I’ve experienced an unwelcome epiphany. According to scientists, this virus looks like it’s here to stay. Put succinctly in a New Yorker article, “This pandemic won’t be truly over until it’s over for everyone”. And with anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers around the globe, the chance that Covid-19 will ever disappear completely seems unlikely.

I won’t ever forget that sign I saw by the roadside, the defiance of its tone. Its ignorant indignance. 

But, driving into my father’s Washington state town, I also noticed the banners they’d hung from light poles. The town adopted the Kiwi motto “Be Kind”. And I witnessed that in action: in those who stayed good-humoured as we tried to socially distance, who nodded as they walked past, because you can’t really smile while wearing a mask. And in everyone who helped - is still helping to look out for my family, when I can’t be there to support them in person. 

So now I’m trying to stay fluid about my future plans. And I’m stocking up on face coverings, in various patterns and shades. 

No, masks are not like handcuffs. There is nothing in life, especially right now, that is ever that black and white.