Brightside

Lockdown’s silver linings

Restrictions are starting to ease now and it won't be long before Australians can travel domestically and internationally. Things are looking up. Written as we approached the end of lockdown, Carolyn Swindell explores what she might miss about those 14 weeks...

Enjoying cocktails Japanese-style under the Cherry Blossoms with husband Pete

Let me preface these remarks by reassuring you that I like a good moan as much as the next middle-aged white woman (possibly more). Soon the days we’ve endured in lockdown will tick over into triple digits and it’s important we don’t try to just pretend everything’s been a bed of roses this year. Or last year. Right now, for instance, I’m barricaded in my home-office, pretending to work but really just hiding while I hear my husband battling our eightyear-old over today’s home learning (that bit’s just between you and me, ok?).

Yes, it will be good when all this Covid-nonsense has been said and done.

But, look, at risk of being a Lower North Shore Polly- Anna and further annoying people whose tempers are already fraying, I’m putting my hand up to say that there are parts of lockdown that I might mourn when they’re gone.

The weather is definitely helping to cast things in a better light. Yes, there’s hay-fever, but there’s also enough colour bursting in the gardens to inspire our inner poets. I’ve tried, and my inner poet appears to be more inclined to dirty limericks than Shakespearean sonnets, but my Instagram is over-run with locked-down Sydneysiders sharing the beauty of new blossoms and bees in action. Handy tip: in Japan, cherry blossom season is enjoyed in a particularly civilised custom called Hanami which basically involves spreading blue tarps out under the blooming trees and drinking copious amounts of alcohol as you gaze at the beauty. Personally I love broadening my children’s understanding of other cultures, so we’ve taken enthusiastically to Hanami in our front-yard.

We used to sit in the backyard to avoid the passing parade. After all, we saw more than enough people each day to need to seek out small talk. But that was BEFORE.

Now we prop ourselves over the front gate like a scene from The Sullivans (if you don’t know what The Sullivans was, find someone over 45 and ask them to regale you with tales about the good old days when there were only FOUR television channels and you just watched whatever was on at the time – how’s that to make you think lockdown in 2021 could be worse?) and talk to anyone walking past. Anyone. About anything. Neighbourhood gossip is leaping off the pages of Facebook and back onto the streets where it belongs.

We know our neighbourhoods. We certainly know what’s 5.1kms from our homes. We can identify the local government boundaries of the municipality we’ve lived in for more than a decade. We can finally match the sullen teenagers we used to see chugging cans of Coke Zero at the bus-stop before school with their parents. They’re out walking. And in some cases, talking. And even laughing. Ok, there’s more dog poo on our lawns. Because everyone who decided to enter the world of dog ownership in the post-Covid world is still the same person they were before. And for some, that person is someone who doesn’t think it’s their job to pick up after their own dog. No, that’s not ideal, but we can’t blame that on lockdown. A jerk’s a jerk in any century.

Do I even own an iron anymore? My car looks like it’s been abandoned, it gets so little use. Better than a trip to Taronga Zoo, each day I can show the kids nesting spiders and an educational study on of local birds’ digestive habits on the windscreen. Unlike Taronga there’s no red panda in residence, but surely it’s just a matter of time before my driveway zoo proliferates. And time is something we’ve got plenty of right now.

Time to do jigsaw puzzles. Time to fully embrace the crushingly-disappointing realisation that after those hundreds of frustrating hours of carefully placing puzzle pieces, you’ve just ended up with the same picture that was on the box all along. Time to pass that puzzle on to your neighbours in the guise of a good deed.

Definitely time to reflect on the profound appreciation we should all have for the work of professional educators. I’ll miss cooking over Zoom at 4pm on Saturdays. A friend who I can’t see (although our 5km zones do overlap in the middle of a bay in the Inner West, we’ve not yet pulled out the kayaks and paddled towards one another like a maritime Heathcliff and Cathy) has pulled together a group – nine of us from across Sydney, most of whom had never met before lockdown – and she emails us a recipe and a shopping list and we cook together each week. There is chopping of garlic and frying of onion and drinking of wine and talking about everything except Covid case numbers. Or Covid anything. It’s a virtual oasis and genuine belly laughs that remind me of life before. And life after.

Someone dropped a Corona beer on our doorstep with a roll of toilet-paper and a note that encouraged us to keep going. An anonymous spirit-lifter from a neighbour. My neighbours loom larger in my life now. We talk more often, we try to do nice things for each other and each other’s kids. Cakes get baked, flowers from gardens get left on doorsteps, we slow in the street and when we ask, “how are you?” through our masks, we’re genuinely asking. We’re worried for one another and circling the metaphorical wagons. I’ll certainly miss that if it ends with lockdown. But I suspect it won’t. I suspect that in many small ways, we’ll be changed forever by this lockdown. Some things will pass. I probably will have to learn how to use the iron again. And wear proper shoes. And put on make-up. But with the end looking like it’s not too far away now, let’s try to focus on the things we’ve appreciated about one another these past ten thousand weeks and hang onto them when we’re back in the big, wide world. I’m Mrs Brightside (Ms Brightside actually, but the poet in me just knows that doesn’t have the same cadence).