Covid-19 Lockdown Easing, A Rural Diary - Week 9
May 18th - 24th, 2020 - Week 9
Kindness
So this was Mental Health Awareness week. The theme was Kindness. There have undoubtedly been extraordinary acts of kindness shown during this exceptional period in our lives. Some have been large, some have been small, all have been important and appreciated. If we cannot be kind to each other, what do we have left? Is this not one of the abiding concepts of a civilised society? You would like to think so, but sometimes I am left scratching my head at the level of hate that still abounds between people and peoples. I had entered into this crisis hoping that people might change a little as a result of our worldwide 'togetherness' in dealing with the pandemic. I fear this may have been a vain hope...yet, hope I cling on to, as without hope, we may as well lay down and die. If even one tiny fraction of the world's population shifts to greater awareness, then that will be a step forward.
Exams
This should have been L's first week of A level exams. She and I were both left a little subdued at this realisation. I had written them all out in my diary, expecting to be getting up and making breakfast for her, waving her off, wishing her luck, welcoming her back home, hearing how they went over a cup of tea, cooking her a nourishing evening meal and encouraging her to get enough sleep around the revision. It was a rite of passage that both she and I were going to go through together. She is my last child and I wanted to savour it; and she, while not exactly missing all the hours of hard work that she would have been going through, nevertheless wanted that opportunity to prove herself, to perhaps get better grades than her older sisters, to make sense of the last 13 years of education. Instead we drank tea together in the kitchen and there were tears as she came to terms with her reality. The other big question is whether she starts university in September. Her sisters are urging her not to as it will likely not be the experience that they had - large gatherings will probably still be off limits so the madness of Freshers week, the socialising, settling in and making new friends will be much more difficult. Lectures may well be all online until the New Year, so that will be an isolating experience as well. Frankly, we cannot tell at the moment how things will pan out - there may indeed be another spike in the autumn after the easing of restrictions over the next few months. Taking a year out may well be a better option, but the jury is out...
At the other end of things, eldest daughter took her last ever exam in formal education. Instead of the expected exam conditions, it was made into an 'Open Book' exam which was 'live' for 24 hours - from 9.30am on the Tuesday till 9.30am on the Wednesday. She worked solidly, her brain frazzled by the end after hours of research and writing and referencing. The subject was Eating Disorders and everything has to be backed up by source referencing. It is a long and tedious job, but engenders fantastic mental discipline and accuracy. In the early hours, her brain fried after over 16 hours of virtually non-stop work, we were helping her to reduce her word count - no helping with the content, just with redactive skills. We went to bed at 2am, she struggled on till 4am, having submitted her last piece of academic work. She is not a natural scientist, so sticking with this psychology degree, through thick and thin, better and worse, has - in her words - been her greatest achievement to date. We raised a glass of fizz to her on Wednesday night and had a barbecue. Again, not quite the antics that would have been happening were she to have been in Newcastle, but the best we could do in the circumstances. As her mother, I can simply say that it was lovely to be able to be there with her, which would not have happened otherwise.
Loss
There has been much that has been lost during these past two months. Freedom. Jobs. Security. Lives.
We have to decide how we are going to move forward from this - collectively and as individuals. We can be positive or negative, kind or cruel, determined or despairing. The experience has been so different for everyone as we are all in unique situations. There has been talk of the pandemic being 'the great leveller'. The only level we can really talk about is that we've all experienced it - worldwide. But just as every nation is unique, so are its people. Our cultures are different, our politics are different, our beliefs are different. And we are all, to a man and woman, baby and child, our own person. We all inhabit our own little worlds, a microcosm in a macrocosm. While generalities are a necessary evil, we cannot account for what goes on in people's heads and hearts. We are all just living our story. Some stories are uplifting, some are depressing, some are averagely good or averagely bad. Some are horrors, some are tragedies, some are comedies. I had hoped with my Covid19WriteNow initiative that people would share some of those stories with me. It has not happened as I had hoped for, but I know that those stories are taking place with every word that I write, even if I never get to see or hear them. They are happening. Perhaps that's all that matters.
History will look back on this period with the wisdom of hindsight. Living in the moment, as we are, it is hard to see the wood for the trees. We are all slashing our way out of the forest and it's causing a fair amount of devastation along the way. But for every tree slashed, a new sapling grows. For all the deaths, there have been births. We must always allow time for grief, but we should also be celebrating these new beginnings, trying our hardest to look forwards positively rather than backwards negatively.
Kindness
So this was Mental Health Awareness week. The theme was Kindness. There have undoubtedly been extraordinary acts of kindness shown during this exceptional period in our lives. Some have been large, some have been small, all have been important and appreciated. If we cannot be kind to each other, what do we have left? Is this not one of the abiding concepts of a civilised society? You would like to think so, but sometimes I am left scratching my head at the level of hate that still abounds between people and peoples. I had entered into this crisis hoping that people might change a little as a result of our worldwide 'togetherness' in dealing with the pandemic. I fear this may have been a vain hope...yet, hope I cling on to, as without hope, we may as well lay down and die. If even one tiny fraction of the world's population shifts to greater awareness, then that will be a step forward.
Exams
This should have been L's first week of A level exams. She and I were both left a little subdued at this realisation. I had written them all out in my diary, expecting to be getting up and making breakfast for her, waving her off, wishing her luck, welcoming her back home, hearing how they went over a cup of tea, cooking her a nourishing evening meal and encouraging her to get enough sleep around the revision. It was a rite of passage that both she and I were going to go through together. She is my last child and I wanted to savour it; and she, while not exactly missing all the hours of hard work that she would have been going through, nevertheless wanted that opportunity to prove herself, to perhaps get better grades than her older sisters, to make sense of the last 13 years of education. Instead we drank tea together in the kitchen and there were tears as she came to terms with her reality. The other big question is whether she starts university in September. Her sisters are urging her not to as it will likely not be the experience that they had - large gatherings will probably still be off limits so the madness of Freshers week, the socialising, settling in and making new friends will be much more difficult. Lectures may well be all online until the New Year, so that will be an isolating experience as well. Frankly, we cannot tell at the moment how things will pan out - there may indeed be another spike in the autumn after the easing of restrictions over the next few months. Taking a year out may well be a better option, but the jury is out...
At the other end of things, eldest daughter took her last ever exam in formal education. Instead of the expected exam conditions, it was made into an 'Open Book' exam which was 'live' for 24 hours - from 9.30am on the Tuesday till 9.30am on the Wednesday. She worked solidly, her brain frazzled by the end after hours of research and writing and referencing. The subject was Eating Disorders and everything has to be backed up by source referencing. It is a long and tedious job, but engenders fantastic mental discipline and accuracy. In the early hours, her brain fried after over 16 hours of virtually non-stop work, we were helping her to reduce her word count - no helping with the content, just with redactive skills. We went to bed at 2am, she struggled on till 4am, having submitted her last piece of academic work. She is not a natural scientist, so sticking with this psychology degree, through thick and thin, better and worse, has - in her words - been her greatest achievement to date. We raised a glass of fizz to her on Wednesday night and had a barbecue. Again, not quite the antics that would have been happening were she to have been in Newcastle, but the best we could do in the circumstances. As her mother, I can simply say that it was lovely to be able to be there with her, which would not have happened otherwise.
Loss
There has been much that has been lost during these past two months. Freedom. Jobs. Security. Lives.
We have to decide how we are going to move forward from this - collectively and as individuals. We can be positive or negative, kind or cruel, determined or despairing. The experience has been so different for everyone as we are all in unique situations. There has been talk of the pandemic being 'the great leveller'. The only level we can really talk about is that we've all experienced it - worldwide. But just as every nation is unique, so are its people. Our cultures are different, our politics are different, our beliefs are different. And we are all, to a man and woman, baby and child, our own person. We all inhabit our own little worlds, a microcosm in a macrocosm. While generalities are a necessary evil, we cannot account for what goes on in people's heads and hearts. We are all just living our story. Some stories are uplifting, some are depressing, some are averagely good or averagely bad. Some are horrors, some are tragedies, some are comedies. I had hoped with my Covid19WriteNow initiative that people would share some of those stories with me. It has not happened as I had hoped for, but I know that those stories are taking place with every word that I write, even if I never get to see or hear them. They are happening. Perhaps that's all that matters.
History will look back on this period with the wisdom of hindsight. Living in the moment, as we are, it is hard to see the wood for the trees. We are all slashing our way out of the forest and it's causing a fair amount of devastation along the way. But for every tree slashed, a new sapling grows. For all the deaths, there have been births. We must always allow time for grief, but we should also be celebrating these new beginnings, trying our hardest to look forwards positively rather than backwards negatively.
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