Little by little, I am becoming accustomed to living in this government-enforced lockdown in Spain. Whereas the first week or so was dedicated to adjusting to this new normal – gloves and mask are required for any excursions outside; smiling faces on a screen in rows of three on a Saturday night; the compulsory cleaning of newly-bought groceries and supplies – I’ve been thinking lately about what lessons the coronavirus pandemic has offered me. The urge to panic, to hoard, to obsessively watch the news, to hit the refresh button to see if the number of infections in our town has grown – all that has faded and is leaving in its place new levels of understanding.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to force you to slow down, even stop altogether. A month ago we celebrated a friend’s birthday at a crowded Italian restaurant in the Eixample. There were a dozen of us sitting around the table, sharing pizza and pasta and passing around plates topped with salad and mozzarella. The woodfire oven filled the place with the scent of bread baking and the sizzle and din of the kitchen seeped their way into our section of the restaurant. We sang happy birthday and I offered a short toast in honor of the birthday girl, who was turning 30 that day. She blew out the candles without a second thought. There was talk of the coronavirus, but at that point we still made jokes (“Watch out, don’t catch the plague!”) because the reality of the situation hadn’t yet interrupted our way of life in Barcelona. It was still a distant, abstract threat. We exchanged hugs and kisses and made plans to hang out, not knowing that just 10 days later our worlds, and perspectives, would be forever changed. Even the happy birthday song, which the WHO recommended as part of its handwashing campaign, became tinted with the coronavirus.

And it’s precisely this memory that has forced me to consider just how important face-to-face contact is for me. My personality has changed since I first moved to Barcelona nearly ten years ago. People are still astounded when I tell them that I made that decision without knowing a single person in the city, let alone the continent. But it was precisely that which served as the catalyst for me to break out of my comfort zone. I started making friends in unexpected places (writing on sunny terraces; a neighbor telling jokes while I hung my clothes to dry; late-night confessions from drunken strangers on the subway) some of whom became friends for life, and others for a season. I used to be an introvert whose greatest fear used to be a table full of people I’d never met before; now I am still bookish and introspective but have learned the potential that every person has to impact your life if only you let them.

Now, as an expat, I’ve grown accustomed to phone calls with family or friends back in the U.S. on my birthday, Christmas, Easter. But thinking again about that birthday dinner, I realize how fore granted I took something as simple as sharing a meal or having an intimate conversation with a friend without the danger of contagion constantly on your mind. Skype, FaceTime, and even the phone are adequate, temporary measures and provide that requisite protection, but for a writer who values each person’s unique gestures, shifts in tone, the placement of one’s gaze, the sweet traces of cologne or perfume, the way an expression can cloud or clench a face – technology just doesn’t cut it. I will embrace my friends and family with a renewed sense of appreciation for human touch, that all-too-natural need for interaction. I know that many of you reading this probably feel the same.

Another gift of the coronavirus pandemic has been seeing my husband Franky spring to action in times of crisis. This June will mark six years since we got married, and though we’ve both supported each other through times of strife and anxiety, neither of us ever suspected that we’d live through something as difficult and thorny as this. Neither of us ever thought that we’d one day have to care for his elderly mother without being able to go near her, nor did we contemplate the possibility of living through a government-enforced lockdown.

Times, clearly, have changed, and Franky – like all of us – has been forced to change along with it. Prone to anxiety and sometimes overwhelmed by stress, I confess that I was worried about how he was going to take it when news first came of the lockdown. But over the last few weeks, I’ve seen him grow in ways that perhaps only a crisis can spur. Our neighbor smokes cigars on his balcony and, despite our polite entreaties, continues to fill our flat with unwanted and harmful secondhand smoke. It annoys me to no end, but I am trying to exercise patience in these trying times. We’d been talking about buying some kind of screen to prevent this from happening, but with the situation the way it is in Spain, this won’t be possible for a few more weeks. So Franky took some cardboard that he had lying around, as well as some trash bags, and fashioned an unsightly, but effective barrier to block out the smoke.

We tried it out today, and I’m happy to report that our neighbor now has his very own hotbox and now keeps the smoke entirely to himself. Crisis breeds creativity.

On Friday night, Franky listened to his mother express her very understandable worries about being infected with the coronavirus and closed his eyes at hearing her uncertainty about being able to overcome the illness. Things became so bleak in her mind that she wrote a long, feverish message on WhatsApp where she detailed plans on how to distribute the inheritance that she was leaving behind. I held him as he wept afterwards, unable to offer anything other than faint whispers of hope. And then I watched him spring into action as he looked up the number for the emergency medical services and then he cradled it to his ear. He waited for more than an hour before he finally spoke with a physician who later made a home visit and diagnosed his mother with pneumonia, a result of the coronavirus. The next day, Franky took his mother medicine and supplies, and though he couldn’t see her in person – another cruel consequence of the lockdown – he video chatted with her for a few minutes to reassure her and tell her that everything was going to be okay. It is not an exaggeration to say that my heart swelled with love at seeing him act so selflessly, so altruistically toward his mother during what is perhaps her time of greatest need. Though I knew firsthand the compassion that Franky is capable of, it took the coronavirus pandemic for me to fully see the boundless light that resides within him.

Today is Day 16 of the government-enforced lockdown in Spain. The undeniable value I place on human interaction and the beauty that arises in these times of the coronavirus are just two of the lessons I’ve been learning over the past few weeks. Without a clear end in sight, who knows what I have yet to learn over the coming days, or what unexpected gifts await. I just hope that I am humble enough to listen, and receive.

Life in the Times of Coronavirus: Lockdown Day 16