It’s now been one calendar month since official lockdown started.
I can’t quite believe that as a family we’ve been doing this for five weeks today. We’re only a week off the length of the normal summer holidays, which always seem endless and defining, the new school term a beacon in the year that signifies the end of summer, a shift in mood, fresh starts.
The memory of normality seems so very long ago. The tiny things we stressed about seem pathetic now.
The logistics and planning that go into getting the kids and all their clobber to Beavers or football or swimming on time. Andy being away on business for a week, leaving me to manage breakfast and bedtime alone - the horrors! Those parents evenings where you need to find a babysitter for 45 minutes. Evenings when the trains are cancelled and Andy ends up in the pub next to Euston station for at least an hour longer than the trains weren’t running.
The dashing about, cramming tea into a spare 15 minutes, the ‘We’re going to be late!!’ screeching which seems to precede every single departure from the house. The daily threat that they’ll have to report to the office because they’ll have missed registration (they never have). The realisation there’s been no teeth brushed *just* as they are putting their coats on. Indeed, winter coats which they will now not need again. They’ll have outgrown them next time it’s cold enough to warrant them, yet they still hang on the hooks in the cupboard.
But it’s only been a few weeks. In many ways I think it’s flown by. Andy thinks it feels longer.
When you look back at things we did at the beginning of lockdown they do feel ages ago. When we had to self isolate after Andy had suspected Coronavirus. The time we got lost in a field. Before we had a beautifully painted shed and Wendy House, a pointed patio, a seeded lawn, a big son with his first lost tooth, a small son with his first ever tooth and a daughter who could write the number 5 the right way round.
I’m sort of sad that, for me, every day seems to be merging into one. The same routine, same processes, same list of things to work through each and every day.
I don’t want to wipe 2020 from our lives. Life is short and I don’t feel like we can afford to just say ‘ah sod it, there’ll always be 2021’.
Andy and I are both guilty of procrastinating, which makes for a bad combination in a couple. We don’t always seize the day. I’m disorganised. He doesn’t plan beyond today. It’s too expensive. We’re knackered.
Three summers ago I woke up on a sunny Saturday and suddenly decided we should go to the lido. So while everyone else was still asleep I packed our swimming stuff ready to leave at 8.30 before I could talk myself out of it. We were in the pool by 9.15 with just a handful of keen beans doing their lengths and it was wonderful.
I still live off that moment of spontaneity. It now seems shameful that I’m recounting an incident that happened three years ago. I thought it was only two years until I looked back for the photo. It just goes to show how rapidly the years whip by.
But the lockdown has made me realise that it’s not all about the big moments. The small ones are just as special. Spontaneous barbecues with friends that turn into an ‘oh sod it’ late bedtime for the kids. Weekends staying with my sisters in London and walking around like I'm living the dream because I’ve just got a flat white 35 seconds from the front door. Wednesday night Supper Clubs with Clare in a pub outside Staines that is EXACTLY 24 minutes from both our houses.
I know I won’t be the only person in whom this enforced stop has distilled a need to do more when we’re released. More of the small stuff and more of the big stuff. Go on the weekends away to the seaside. Run the tricky second half marathon I’ve given up all hope of getting round to. Write the book that doing this blog has made me realise I need to tackle.
Fill the days with a wider variety of stuff so we will be able to look back in a decade or two and know we crammed it all in.
We may have only been in lockdown for a month but it’s a month we won’t get back. We owe it to this lost time to get out and live again. But this time with a bit more commitment to the cause.
Comments