I almost had to pull over such was the arrow straight truth of this.
She is oddly in tune with and articulate about, her feelings. This isn’t the
first time that she has taken the words out of my mouth with her simple
descriptions.
It struck me that yes, how can we feel anything like ourselves,
without people to orient ourselves against? Without school, without friends,
without hugs or parties, soft play or grandparents?
She is still learning about her place in the world and its suddenly been cut off at the knees (for the third
time in a year).
Recently she has taken to telling people (via zoom generally)
that 'the world has turned upside down!' (said with much enthusiasm and hand
gestures to illustrate). Her general point is that her little sister is still
trotting off to preschool every morning while she, the big girl, stays home with
daddy to do her lessons.
Life IS pretty strange lets be honest, for most of us
at the moment.
We have generally settled into this third lockdown a little bit
too comfortably if you ask me. It feels less weird than the other ones. We have
become used to living with less. To limiting our ideas and perspectives. Almost,
(but not quite) immune to the staggering death toll and infection rate.
(In fact, about the only thing that we’re not bloody well immune to is covid19 itself!)
The last couple of weeks in Leeds we have had snow. Oodles and oodles
of it, the stuff you dream about waking up to as a kid, enough for gigantic snow
people and proper Enid Blyton snowball fights.
The children have been ludicrously delighted and have submerged themselves in it whenever they possibly
could.
The schools shut this Friday, not that it mattered too much to Clara who
is, as I previously mentioned being scrupulously ( I hope) home educated by her
father. But it meant that I got a bonus weekend day from work.
I started walking to work on Friday before I heard that school was shut and found myself moved by
it afresh.
You see snow offers a settling. A purity of sorts. I don't understand
it really. On a grown-up level I'm really irritated by it, and the car was stuck
so I was quite literally trapped by it. But on a deeper, older level I was
calmed and enchanted.
It brings fun and lightness in its thick unapologetic, unsolicited blanket.
This Friday morning as I walked while the sun rose upon my
back I was aware of how the snow drew forth smiles on strangers faces, at
something so much bigger than us, something so gloriously inconvenient,
something to think about other than the virus.
This year I feel that the seasons
have marked the passing of time better and more reliably than any of the normal
things. No restrictions have been put on them. They have continued as God
intended. sun shining and Leaves dropping when they ought to, now snow falling.
I have inhabited the perfect cycle of a children’s storybook year and it has
brought me great comfort.
For despite everything, we are still here. We are
still marking the gradual passing of time allotted to each month and year just
like we always have done and regardless of how much we wish it would pass or
linger.
And I do want it to pass - and very soon if at all possible.
But for
now, I will stay here and inhabit my strange upside down world in the best and
most hopeful way I possibly can.
I am sending my love to you as you do the same.
