Of course, I'm scared. There's a virus out there and it's one with random habits.
But in the moments when I can keep my fear in check, I admire the beautiful silver lining I've found in this strange new world. It's this: virtual lockdown has given me permission to simply slow down.
Since I became an adult (about 30 years ago), I've taken on incrementally more, and more, and more ... until I found myself with a husband, three children (each one with a raft of interests and extracurricular activities including sports and music), two demanding jobs, many professional/social obligations, a three-acre property, a menagerie to care for, plus the withering remains of my stubborn desire to occasionally take time for myself.
Although I never entirely let go of my hobbies (knitting, sewing, handcrafts of all kinds) they had come to seem like ridiculously luxurious ways to spend time. Other niceties - like sending thank you cards and making pastry by hand - had been downgraded to fussy trivialities in my 'lower your standards and keep going' mentality.
I didn't mean to get so overscheduled - I doubt that anybody does - but every time my kids would ask for a new activity (debating, the school musical), I'd say 'yes', because it seemed like I should rise to the challenge of making good things possible for them, even at the cost of my own sanity.
Like many, I was suffering from the sheer overwhelming volume of 'stuff' that was spread out before me on the table of life.
During this year's January holiday, I felt like a bow-backed camel who was one or two straws short of breaking. Tearily, I said to my mother "I don't want to go back to my life. This busy-ness ... it's just all too relentless, too hard." I was doing so much that I couldn't enjoy anything; I was just swerving between being stress and feeling guilty.
Enter: Covid-19 and the virtual lockdown of our community.
I don't have to (can't) go anywhere. With all the frantic running around and out-of-the-house socializing suddenly removed from my diary, my new days revolve around feeding my family, finding inventive ways to stay in touch with the people I love and prioritizing the work tasks that really need to be done. I feel saner than I have done for years.
Of course, I wish that none of this was happening. Of course, the first thing I have to do each morning is remember that the world has changed and that this isn't a dream. But, once I've done that, and dealt with my fear, the next feeling I have is one of relief.
Because my parents are in their 70s, I'm staying away from them, and although I miss real life interactions with them, I ring them every day and we're experimenting with online card games, working out how to play 500 together via computer.
The regular Scrabble dates I have with a dear friend are now being replaced by Words with Friends. I've planted the broad beans and even cast on a complicated jumper I've been wanting to knit for my husband for half a decade.
Please don't think I'm trying to tell you that it's all bucolic productivity and harmony around at our place. With five of us under the same roof, I've been drawn into petty squabbles, lapsed into utter disorganization, and listened to the news until I felt half-paralysed but at the same time unable to sleep.
I haven't yet really settled to the stillness required to read the many novels on my bedside table, but at least I'm managing non-fiction, which my brain finds easier to cope with when it's under stress.
I'm getting through this imperfectly and messily, and I am valuing the way this moment of crisis has enabled me to pause and recalibrate, to remember what I really love, who I really love, and what is really necessary as opposed to what the world of marketing tells me that I ought to desire and strive for.
To the most sensitive of my children, I find myself saying almost every day the words I really need to hear myself: 'What can we control right now? Nothing but the present moment. And, are we okay in this present moment? We are. What's beautiful in this moment? Let's appreciate it.'
Wherever you are, whatever your situation, I wish you strength. I also wish you enough small miracles that they become like stepping-stones: safe landing spaces that will enable you to navigate your way to the other side.
- Award-winning Tasmanian author and academic Danielle Wood's latest novel The Lost Love Song (Penguin Random House) written under the name Minnie Darke, is out now. She is also the author of the best-selling novel Star-crossed - winner of the Margaret Scott People's Choice Award - which has now been published in over 30 countries. She lives in Tasmania with her husband and family.
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