Locked down, not knocked down.

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A time of grace

In February 2020 after having returned from the Antarctic where peace and quiet is the norm I was excited to come back to my husband, our new rental apartment and life in Italy. Morning coffee with a brioche con crema and evening appero with the tasty petite snacks. So began our life at home.

A week or two later – bam !!! The corona virus became a real threat especially in Italy. The epicentre of the outbreak was in Bergamo near Milan. To begin with the hospitals got inundated with cases of COVID19 and soon the ICU was full to overflowing with cases that required high care. The Prime Minister decided that in order to contain the outbreak some of our regions should isolate and keep the healthy people out of danger and the people showing symptoms away from those that are healthy, to stop endangering the elderly.

So from the 9^th of March we in Italy have been in lockdown. What I will remember about this time is that secretly I have loved being locked down as it has meant 100% sharing time and space with my husband. It is really rare for us to be in the same place at the same time so here I am together with him ‘stuck’ indoors. I have loved being across the table from him, sharing thoughts, hugs, food and endless cups of tea.

For 8 weeks, we have been indoors, for 60 days today the 9^th of May, only allowed to go to the supermarket then straight back to our apartment. Fortunately this week things have eased a phase in Italy and we started walking further afield up the surrounding hills to get the lungs and legs functioning again.

I made a routine that gets me through the days. I started off the lockdown scrolling through the pages and pages of candy on the net and then pulled myself up by my boot straps and worked out what needed to be done, placed the jobs in segments and made a little day planner. Sort photos, learn Italian online, write an operating manual for work, listen to inspirational talks while doing those tasks, make nutritious lunches for us thereby improving my cooking skills and enjoying the meditation of chopping onions and garlic finely. And last but not least, get this blog off the ground !! So the day is spent doing things that are productive and creative thus ensuring that I have something to show for this grace time that we have been given.

In the grand scheme of things, I wanted to remember what this was like and what was NORMAL in this moment in time; we knew something was coming we just didn’t know what. There had to be a change, a universal shake by the shoulders; too much discord was happening on earth to continue on the same path.

In the words of Dr Jane Goodall – ‘Hopefully we should emerge wiser. I think there will be greater awareness of how we brought this pandemic on ourselves and that people will change. I hope there’s a groundswell of enough millions of people who’ve never before breathed clean air in cities, who’ve never been able to look up at night and see a clear sky with twinkling stars. I hope that there’llbe enough of them to eventually force big business and politicians to…. stop carrying on with business as usual. But the fear is that so many leaders now around the world don’t seem to care about future generations, don’t seem to care about the health of the planet’.

With despair, I believe she is right. We don’t seem to want to learn from this huge happening in our time – when the world stopped for two months.

We will acknowledge only what suits us and push the rest under the carpet and start over with what caused the problem in the first place, what will it take one wonders. When will our world leaders change the way we do things for the better as respectable guests on the planet.

There are always equals and opposites, so what I have read and seen happening on the positive side is that the planet was able to take a breath and reset to a certain degree, nature came up and out in various ways, we saw deer and wild animals appearing in areas that usually are too populated or polluted for their survival, stars were seen more clearly than ever before, mountain ranges were photographed from previously smogged up villages. Families are able to share quality time together, meals are home cooked, people are more creative and innovative with ideas, the internet is flooded with people video-ing their latest ideas on line. Music and the arts abound on line. Children are learning different things to what they would usually learn in the classroom, skills that we use in our homes that will help with independence. Families are chatting on skype and zoom and creating ways of connecting and having some together time with a difference. People helping each other to cope with food deliveries, others calling the elderly and lonely just to check that they are ok, friends sewing masks and getting them to the needy and the care workers. There is a huge movement of care for our fellow man from those that can provide not to mention the incredible selfless task our medical teams have provided for the ones that were not lucky enough to dodge the virus – they deserve the biggest thank you – so thank you to anyone that is reading this blog who has been a care provider my heart is so grateful to you, you know who you are.

To be continued……..