I haven’t posted anything for a few days because work got a bit mad. Being freelance it’s not easy to turn down work at the best of times and now, the worst of times, I’d be crackers to decline anything that came in.
As it is I’m now having to get up pre-5.30am to try and fit it in (just as Xander has started sleeping till 6.30am) - but that’s all rather pointless when I spend an hour yawning and glazing over, unable to think of words or how to construct a sentence.
Nonetheless, this is supposed to be a diary so I must keep it up in the interests of posterity, particularly as we’ve done something that didn’t involve 1) home-schooling 2) going for a walk or 3) putting on Netflix.
We saw my parents!
After the great success of our Friday in Windsor Great Park with Clare, I was on a bit of a high and thought it would be a great idea to get Mum and Dad along as they, too, live only 30 minutes away. (Perhaps everyone lives 30 minutes away from Windsor. Perhaps it’s like some sort of alternative universe that allows the monarchy to be immediately accessible to all Britons. Huh.)
However, what we didn’t bank on, being a Sunday, was 70% of Berkshire also being there. It was immediately obvious that an alarming number of people can’t walk, talk and look up at the same time, no child can cycle in a straight line (we knew that one) and an extraordinary number of people are very unfamiliar with the concept of two metres.
Maybe it’s three months of isolation, but I felt really rather flustered by all the bodies. They were everywhere. It was hard to move quick enough to get away from people who were clearly not at all worried about catching or passing on a potentially fatal virus.
But not to worry: for reasons unknown, my septuagenarian parents rocked up with a bicycle in the boot of the car.
I’m not entirely sure I have ever seen either of my parents ride a bike. These past few weeks I’ve been vaguely aware of Mum talking about having cycled round to her mate Hilary’s to have a socially distanced fitness session with Wayne, Hilary’s personal trainer, but every single element of that vision was so bizarre I think my brain short circuited, leaving me unable to formulate any follow up questions.
So while Henry and Bella zoomed about on their bikes (Henry not so much struggling with straight lines as keeping below 20mph on crowded footpaths) my Dad tootled along behind them, at one point zipping off in the other direction to ‘check out the view’, calling out over his shoulder that he’d catch us up. I fear he’s found a new hobby. God help us if he discovers Lycra.
We hunted baby frogs, we played football and catch, we ate ice cream and we exchanged gifts: I finally managed to give Dad his Easter present (a four-pack of Toffee Crisp, his absolute fave) and Mum handed over some snazzy face masks she has run up on the sewing machine.
Besides the cycling, and the fact that thanks to his first beard since Everest 1970 Dad now looks like a ginger David Bellamy, it was all just very lovely and normal.
But for me there was always something lurking on the periphery. Something I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge but that cast an inevitable shadow over things.
It felt as if they were on day release from an open prison, getting ready for their reintegration into society. I could never shake the feeling that we were being watched and that if we broke the rules someone or something would swoop from the shrubbery and take us away.
The virus was always there, a silent threat. In other people, of course, but also in each other. Could we have it? Could we be asymptomatic? If we were, was there a moment where we had got lazy and could have passed it on? No, I don’t think so. Except Mum pushed the buggy at one point. And Andy carried a cup of tea and an ice cream back from the kiosk for them (in a tub, not a cone, on account of the germs).
It was all just so stressful. Not too stressful to not want to do it again - ideally every day from here on in - but more stressful than hanging out with your parents should ever be.
I hated that we couldn’t touch. A big old bear hug off my dad (more bear-like than ever now) is one of those magic things that strips away the years and makes me a kid again. It’s comforting and reassuring and for a split second I’m not a 38-year-old mother of three, I’m just a girl getting a cuddle from her dad.
Meanwhile, for someone with far less flesh on her bones than me, my mother has a fierceness to her hugs that I know I will have when my children have flown the nest and I am determined to make the most of any excuse to squeeze them and inhale them and check they are eating well and looking after themselves as best they can without me on the case.
But what really broke my heart was that they couldn’t touch the kids. Henry didn’t stay still long enough for anyone to get near him even if they’d wanted to (he didn’t come out of the tree he was climbing for the first ten minutes after they arrived) and, anyway, at nearly seven years old hugging in public is not his thing. (Don’t tell him I told you but he cannot get enough of them at home where no one can see.)
Bella on the other hand is very tactile and the enforced distance was hard to watch from both sides. At one point, when she could take it no longer, Mum made her turn around so she could give her a squidge without their faces getting too close.
And Xander, who hasn’t seen his grandparents in the flesh since he was just over seven months old, didn’t know what to make of these strange people. No beams of recognition. No twisting fists, opening and closing at 100mph in excitement. No arms outstretched to be picked up. Just a look of blank confusion followed by a quivery lip if he couldn’t see me or Andy.
I couldn’t handle that.
Nor can I handle thinking about how much longer this will go on. But I think deep down I know it will be for the rest of the year and into next.
I could cry.
But, that will help no one.
The main thing is we saw them. In 3D. At a time when a lot of my friends have no hope of seeing their parents because they live too far away for day trips (though I would urge everyone just to check they, too, don’t by some miracle live 30 minutes from Windsor Great Park).
We chatted about everything and nothing. They got to see the kids running around, not fidgeting behind a computer screen. I was reassured they’re not going completely bonkers (besides the Wayne thing - I don’t know what that’s about).
And I didn’t develop a sudden cough on the way home so now we’re just counting down another 10 days to be reassured we haven’t given them anything.
But if someone can just find a COVID vaccine now, please, that would be great. I can’t take much more of this.
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