Wednesday, April 1, 2020 // The Statement
6B
I
n March of 2019, my younger
brother Jack and I found ourselves
shoulder to shoulder on an itchy
cot in the lemon-scented, linoleum-tiled
hallway of the University of Michigan
emergency room. He assured me for the
umpteenth time that I was fine, but the
sharp pain in my chest told me otherwise.
Jack’s pragmatic mind knew enough about
my history of anxiety and hypochondria
to know that I was suffering from a panic
attack, and not heart failure, but he sat
patiently beside me for the five enduring
hours. He stayed there, empathetic, until
my vitals were declared perfect, my chest
clear and I was handed a blue-grey inhaler
for “exercise-induced asthma” and a
bubblegum pink discharge slip.
There’s one word to describe my brother, a
first-year pre-med student: sensible. He acts
with realism and quietude. He’s easygoing,
down-to-earth and erudite. Going to school
on the same campus as my brother Jack
is uncomplicated and bright; he has an
inherent impulse to put others at ease.
This is why Jack didn’t object to the
10-and-a-half hour drive we had to endure
together from Ann Arbor, Michigan to
Fair Haven, New Jersey, when University
President Mark Schlissel urged students
to go home to avoid further exposure to
the rapidly spreading COVID-19. For all of
college, we had never driven to or from New
Jersey: It was too long of a drive, mostly
on open highways, which triggered my
anxiety. There was, then, a sentimentality
to the departure, and its intangible ironies.
The last time leaving Ann Arbor as an
undergraduate student would be nestled
among a first.
After bartering with my parents to stay in
Ann Arbor for a few more days before leaving,
so I could give my goodbyes to hulking
buildings and people who have impacted my
journey in immeasurable ways, we rented a
2018 silver Mitsubishi.
As it drew closer to when I had to leave
town, I treated every goodbye as a “see you
soon” and pushed sentimentality from my
mind as if it had no place there. Pathetic
fallacy welcomed sorrow to the array of
emotions I was feeling as it poured rain my
entire last day in Ann Arbor. I packed the
backseat of the car with trash bags of grey-
purple bedding, boxes of faded The Michigan
Daily newspapers and suitcases bursting
with heavy sweaters and rainbow scarves.
In my chest lived an unnerving cocktail of
isolation and desolation. I’d never felt so
without a home before, as I did now, being
uprooted from Michigan, a place where I
had learned, lost and grown: I started college
with long hair, pink bedding and dreams of
sorority houses and fraternity boys, and I
ended with short, chin-length hair, a lack
of Greek life affiliation and a deep-seated
passion for writing poems and telling stories.
I knew it would never truly feel like the
right time to leave Michigan, but there
definitely is a wrong time. There I was,
standing in front of a rental car packed with
my entire life, seven weeks before the closure
that was supposed to make a semi-sweet
goodbye feel, at the very least, conventional.
That’s why, as I got into the driver’s seat
of that same overpacked Mitsubishi the
next morning, a road trip playlist titled “It
is 100% Coronatime” playing softly in the
background, I focused on our drive and
destination — not the departure.
The plan was for Jack and me to split
the drive in half. We spent the first five
hours of the drive on a road trip euphoria.
We laughed and reminisced, telling
one another stories about the questions
smartass kids asked in humid lecture
halls, roommates that go to Chipotle for
brunch every Sunday, sweaty parties full of
theater majors where something ironically
dramatic happened and the idiosyncratic
people we’d left behind. We listened
through the Camp Rock 1 and 2 soundtracks
and sang along to Bruce Springsteen songs.
There was strange tranquility as I drove
down Ohio’s stretch of I-80, sipping on a
Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. After a while, we
just drove quietly, both lost in thought.
J
ack began begging me to drive once
it hit noon. At 1:30 p.m., I pulled
into the nearest gas station. Jack
filled the gas while I got into the passenger
seat, both glad he was to drive the rest of
the way. We ate yogurt-covered pretzels
and sang along to the Hamilton soundtrack
for the first half-hour that he sat behind the
wheel. The Pennsylvania highway began to
empty of cars and fill with thick, foggy air.
At 2 p.m., an aunt of ours who we hadn’t
spoken to in a while called. She wanted
to see how the drive was, and perhaps,
subliminally, make us feel some strain
of guilt for not leaving Ann Arbor five
days earlier. She went on for 20 minutes
about what her family had been doing to
quarantine, referencing terrible stories of
people in New Jersey who’d passed away
due to the virus.
“Have you been social distancing at
school?” She asked, poking around for
information about Ann Arbor, where the
first few cases had begun to pop up just as
we pulled away from campus.
“Uh … sort of, I mean, things were just
starting to close when we left. We said
goodbye to our friends,” I said, trying to
understand why it was important to her. I
didn’t know what to say, feeling suddenly
guilty,
even
though
every
goodbye
was from a distance — light taps of our
sweatshirt-covered elbows.
“Well, what’s your plan when you get
home? What have your parents been
doing?” My brother and I shared a muddled
glance. When we finally hung up, dread and
apprehension hung in the air-conditioned
car that hadn’t before.
A
s we continued driving, I noticed
that Jack had been coughing
and yawning for the bulk of the
drive. I knew this wasn’t abnormal for him,
as he’d been on allergy medication since he
was a toddler and sometimes his symptoms
come back when he forgets to take it. “Have
you been taking your meds?” I asked.
“No,”
he
answered,
yawning
and
focusing on the road.
“Do you think you should tell mom and
dad you’re coughing then? So they can
refill your meds or something — you don’t
want them to freak out,” I said cautiously,
noticing him yawn again.
“Maybe,” he said, yawning and coughing
again. He’d told me he went to bed at 2:30
a.m. the morning before we left, and I
figured his impending exhaustion and
the intermittent bursts of coughing would
distract him from the road, which was
growing foggier as we found ourselves
deeper in Pennsylvania.
“Pull over,” I said, referencing a wide
shoulder off the highway. “I think I
should drive. You’re tired and you seem
distracted.”
Without any sort of argument or
rebuttal, he pulled over onto the shoulder.
That’s when I sensed something could
be wrong — an edge of anxiety rising
in my chest. Though I normally worry
relentlessly about everyone I care about,
this time I suppressed the urge and focused
on being responsible, nurturing and
cautious. Jack went relatively silent for the
next 90 minutes and I tried to keep my leg
from cramping to drive with ease. I figured
he was tired. I glanced in the mirror,
eventually, and met his eyes. I know my
brother, and I can see it in his face when
something is wrong.
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Finding peace in the Mitsubishi
BY ELI RALLO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
PHOTO COURTESY OF ELI RALLO