The cowpats of lockdown

As lockdown continues I've been struck by how much mine and my husband's emotional experience of lockdown seems to be travelling along the same timeline as that of other people. When I posted about lockdown lethargy, lots of friends said that yes, this was exactly what they were experiencing at that same moment. Meanwhile, almost everyone I spoke to at the end of last week agreed that the sixth week of lockdown was a real doozy.

In our household, last week saw every family member - including the ten-month old - regularly dissolving into bouts of distress. The ten-month old spent a lot of time asking to be put down and then face-planting the floor in despair at being put down. My husband hid in The Library (his home work-space) a lot, and I believe took to working on the spare bed in there, buried under duvets in a throwback to student days. I cried a lot and ate an entire packet of 'Squashies' in a single sitting. Us two adults found ourselves struggling with a sudden mutual dislike of on another's company, which was somewhat unfortunate given that we didn't exactly have anyone else to socialise with. Then, just as suddenly, the storm passed, and this week we've felt neither lethargic nor tearful, and returned to our habitual enjoyment of one another's companionship - though the baby is still clingy, and the duvet-nest has apparently become a preferred working space for my husband. 

Speaking of having a weight on my back...

For me, week six in lockdown made me think of Duke of Edinburgh expeditions (stay with me here!). On the two Gold expeditions, teams of students walk 50 miles or more over the course of 4 days (3 nights). The middle two days were, in my memory, the worst. The first day you are fresh, and excited, and striding up and down hills in the Lake District with a massive backpack feels like a novelty. The last day, you are sore, blistered, and aching, but you also know that you'll be hitting the finish line very soon, and can look forward to the imminent prospect of food not cooked on a camp stove, a shower, and putting the damned backpack down at last. In the middle days you have neither novelty nor the promise of sweet release to help perk you up. You are just trudging. Sometimes you can be perfectly content trudging - look at the landscape, breathe the air! - but sometimes one of your teammates misreads the map and you climb the wrong mountain and you say some rude words and storm off down the valley to get to the right mountain and skid on a cowpat and cry.
 
Right now we are in the middle days of lockdown, and last week was a wrong-mountain, slipping-up-on-a-cowpat sort of time. The frisson of novelty has worn off, and the question of when and how this will end (if end is really the right word) is still up in the air. The post-lockdown hugs, visits to friends and family, being able to have coffee in a coffee shop or lunch in a restaurant, are all too distant to lighten our steps towards them just yet.

This week, at least, I am trudging fairly happily. I'm tired of having the weight of lockdown on my back, as I'm sure many are, but me and my team-mates are getting on well again, and I've calmed down enough to stop and enjoy my surroundings. Until the next cowpat.