Teaching and learning

The last few weeks have been weeks of big feelings and deep thoughts. Just in time for my 29th birthday, Nicola Sturgeon announced that we would be moving to 'Phase 1' of the path out of lockdown, meaning we could meet one other household in any outside space, including our gardens. A dear friend came to visit, and it felt like getting drunk: just being able to sit two metres from another person and to talk at length, without computer screens in between. It made me realise that the substitutes we had come to rely on during lockdown were paltry things indeed. 

This easing of restrictions has also made me very aware of what my daughter has missed. When lockdown began, she was 9 months old, had just started to crawl, and was only occasionally interested in the presence of other children. Now she is almost one, almost walking, and she is ready to play. She has spent a quarter of her life in lockdown.

She is, even under 'ordinary' lockdown circumstances, a happy, playful child, but I have noticed over the past week or so how much happier she is around other people. She will happily put up with her parents talking at length with another adult if that adult is a real body a few metres away, whilst her patience for video chats is much more limited. During a visit to friends with a toddler some nine months older than her, she got sprayed in the face with a water sprinkler, and cried. I bundled her up and, a contrary parent, laughed. This was the first time in her life that playing with a peer had turned to tears - that there had even been the opportunity for this to occur.

I worry more about the impact of lockdown on her now that it is easing. I worry what I am teaching her when I grab her, mid-flight, as she crawls towards a visiting adult. When physical transgressions occur - we are human, and she is a baby - and she touches a person who is neither me nor her father, the guilt I feel for 'breaking the rules' is matched by the assuagement of the guilt I feel that social distancing might inadvertantly be teaching her to avoid others, to never share.

And yet, at the same time as we have been delighting in human company, just anger and deep-welled grief have also been sweeping the globe. To my shame, I have never before thought as deeply about racism as I have over the past days. I think once again of teaching my daughter. Of the fact that as a white mother of a white baby I have the privilege of never having to teach her how to avoid being killed or harmed for the colour of her skin. That I have the responsibility of teaching her to be aware of her privilege, and to use it with the aim that, perhaps, her children won't have that privilege. I look at her toys, her books. I think about how ignorant I am about how even to start, and know that I have a lot to learn.

Maybe-COVID

It has been a strange week in the Jackson-Hollis household. Just about a week ago, Kelsey turned to me and said "I feel a bit strange". He was, in fact, swaying slightly. That evening, I made a bolognaise, and blamed the fact that the mince was out of the freezer for the fact that we both agreed the meal tasted like cardboard. The next morning, I woke up to a complete fog of fatigue, which reminded me of nothing so much as the first trimester of pregnancy. (And before you ask, please note we have spent the last however-many weeks of lockdown in the company of an energetic 11-month old who cackles maniacally if we so much as hug one another).

We shrugged at each other and agreed we'd better self-isolate. We live in a small village with a significant elderly population, many of whom we're very fond of - we didn't want to be unwittingly responsible for spreading 'The Plague', as Kelsey insists on calling it, around our beloved home. It was the day before our usual shopping day, but fortunately said small village is pretty well-equipped for self-isolating: all of the small, independent shops (greengrocer, butcher, and wholefood shop) do home deliveries. So we stocked up on fruit, veg, chopped tomatoes, and fancy icecream and hunkered down.

I have no idea whether it was COVID-19. Regardless, it was thoroughly strange. Kelsey had body aches, first all over and then condensing down into a drilling lower back pain. I mostly felt completely and utterly exhausted for no apparent reason, and very dizzy. Every now and then I would start coughing, continue doing so for half an hour or so, and then would just stop. The energetic 11-month old had a triple-nap day, months after dropping down to two naps. At no point did I feel like death warmed up, and I'd take the symptoms I did have over norovirus, normal flu, or hand foot and mouth disease (all of which I've had the pleasure of over the past year) any day. But it has been, and continues to be - still coughing, still knackered - one of the weirdest illnesses I've had.

I spent a lot of time during the past week of self-isolation feeling anxious about what people out there were thinking. The village grapevine has apparently been quite unaffected by social isolation, and we received anxious phonecalls, emails, and WhatsApp messages from various neighbours. I felt bizarrely guilty for causing so much worry. I felt conflicted about the fact that the headline going round was 'Dawn and Kelsey have coronavirus' when we didn't know for sure. What if we'd just had some other weird illness, and then caught the real thing in later weeks? Wouldn't people just think we were drama llamas, the couple who cried COVID-19? I spent a lot of time reading articles about the array of symptoms reported beyond the 'cough and fever' highlighted on government websites.
 
Ironically, it was only yesterday, a week after our bland bolognaise, that new advice was released to the effect that people should look out for loss of taste as an early symptom. It was also only yesterday that testing was opened up to the general public... with the caveat that you should get tested within no more than five days of first exhibiting symptoms. There are also no home tests available, and the nearest testing centre to us is an hour and a half round trip. On the one hand, getting tested could add to the sum of knowledge about coronavirus. On the other, travelling to get tested would probably see us doing more to spread our maybe-virus (getting petrol, potentially having to stop and get out if the wee one started crying, interacting with people at the testing centre) than anything else. So we'll probably never know for sure whether we had it.

Speaking of spreading, today saw us hit the magical 7-day moment when, according to UK government advice, we are safe to leave our home again. However, we've reluctantly decided to stay in for a further 7 days, since there seems to be research out there suggesting that you can be infectious for longer than that convenient week. Maybe we're no longer infectious, maybe we never had coronavirus, but maybe we did and maybe we still are. I'd much rather take the risk of being wrong and staying in self-isolation unecessarily than the alternative.

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.

Lockdown Lethargy

So far I have experienced this lockdown in distinct emotional stages. There was the initial stage, when we went so suddenly from 'social distancing' to full lockdown, which was stressful and anxious but at the same time novel and, in a morbid kind of way, exciting. Then there were a few days in which I found myself actively enjoying lockdown, on a domestic level, counting all the positives it had brought my small family, forcing us to develop routines and habits to keep us all happy and healthy, and forcing me to slow down a bit. Then there came a couple of weeks in which, as I discussed in my last blog post, lockdown started to feel normal, days and weeks speeding by. 

Right now, lockdown time has slowed down again.

As will probably surprise exactly no one, I am a busy person. One reason why it took a global pandemic to force me to slow down is because I like having lots to do, having places to be, deadlines to meet. Maternity leave was a shock to my system in this respect, but I just replaced work responsibilities with going to baby groups. I used to say that I'd have been quite happy staying home all day with the baby, but that she liked the socialisation. I now realise I was lying outrageously to myself. She's happy as a pig in mud playing all day at home. The baby groups, the swimming, the Book Bugs sessions, the music, were really for me.

But! I hear you say. There's no reason why you can't be busy in lockdown. There are virtual baby groups, you can have coffees via Zoom, you can write blogs, learn the violin, crochet a baby hat... all of which I've tried over the past few weeks, and they do fill the time. But over the past few days I've found that both my motivation to do these things, and the pleasure I take in doing them, has bottomed out entirely. My get-up-and-go, which in the pre-lockdown past has enabled me to juggle organising events, writing articles, rowing training, and seeing friends, has wandered off, yawning, when faced with the single ball of staying occupied during lockdown. I am experiencing Lockdown Lethargy. 

 I feel too lethargic to dream up a caption to justify this illustration of our locked-down play area...

 
The way my husband - who is also experiencing this stage - describes it, Lockdown Lethargy makes everything 'just okay'. A nice glass of wine? It's okay. Hobbies that used to delight? They're okay. Research topics that used to inspire excitement? Just okay. Of course, 'just okay' is a lot better than 'really crap', and better than what many people are experiencing right now, but it's still draining living inside what feels like a photograph with most of the colour taken out of it. More seriously, 'just okay' feels like a milder version of a familiar-to-me symptom of depression, in which the illness sucks joy from any activity to which you'd normally turn to lift your mood.

So I have decided there are two things to do to tackle this. One I am doing right now, in actually writing a blog post rather than just sleepily thinking about it. A few weeks ago I was right, I think, to take this newly-discovered time to slow down, but now I need to actively speed up before I come to a full stop. Basically, in terms of doing stuff and enjoying it, I'm going to try faking it until I make it, because this isn't depression (yet), this is just Lockdown Lethargy, and pulling my socks up to get out of it is a very okay response.

The other thing is to remind myself that, just as the previous personal phases of lockdown have passed, so too shall this - and wait and see what the next emotional stage of lockdown brings for me.

A new normal

It is strange, and a little scary, how quickly we adapt to new circumstances. Speaking to a friend recently, we both agreed that the second week of lockdown had seemed to go by in a flash. During the first week, it felt as if time was moving in slow motion, every hour and day filled with the question of how it would be possible to get through weeks or even months of this bizarre 'new life' with sanity intact. Now, there is so much that a week ago felt strange that now feels normal. 

It feels normal, now to keep one's distance when out and about, to the point that it feels like a terrible social solecism to accidentally cross the invisible two-metre line: meeting even a friend on a narrow path results in an awkward dance. It feels normal to stand in a stretched-out, socially-distanced queue outside the greengrocer's, to wait by the door of a shop for the last customer to exit before you can enter. 

It feels normal to wake up and fill a day almost entirely within the bounds of one's own home. There is a rhythm and a routine that is almost soothing. Domestic chores have become pleasantly meditative: one of my favourite parts of the day is putting the washing out on the line, and taking my time over it, because after all, what is there to rush for? 

I know I am very very lucky to have this outside space as part of my home.

It feels normal for the vast majority of social interactions to take place over a screen. In the first week of lockdown, Zoom meetings, WhatsApp video chats, and Skype calls felt charged and formal; people anxious to make connections, but still clumsy in dealing with multi-person chats, unsure where to put the phone for the best camera angle. Now, it feels oddly natural, as people get the hang of selectively muting their microphones to better hear whoever is speaking, of propping their phones up somewhere whilst they get on with chores or tending to children, just as we'd have done if visiting in one another's homes in the pre-lockdown days.

It feels normal, now, to think of 'pre-lockdown days' as a time quite separate from now.

The weekly ritual of stepping out of the front door to clap at 8pm feels so entrenched, now, that it is hard to believe it has only taken place twice in our lifetimes.

Some things still don't feel normal to me. I am still startled to see people wearing masks, though I understand why they do it. I find it easier to capture a sense of calm and normality in the present moment than when thinking about the future. I live by the sea, and every time we take our daily walk I find it hard to imagine a summer in which families will not congregate on the beach, sunbathing and playing in the water. I worry that harsher lockdown measures may be necessary, and what that will look like. Sometimes, I worry that by the time lockdown is ended, we'll be so used to it all that 'returning to normal' will be a whole new time of strangeness and adaptation.

Addicted to Society

I started (and abandoned) this blog a different self ago: a just-married Master's student at Cambridge, living in an ultra-modern shoebox flat and worrying about whether my husband would be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Today, I have been married for almost 8 years, my 9-month old baby is wrapped to my chest, I live in a blessedly rambly old house in Scotland, and I am worrying about... well, you all know what, and so we come to my reason for resurrecting this blog, despite my cringes at the writings of my younger self.

The title of this blog, 'Scribetur', means 'it will be written', and I'm conscious of two things right now, a few days into Britain's lockdown due to COVID-19. One is that right now, writing - communicating, reaching out - is more important than ever. The other is that, to be brutally honest, there isn't much I can do right now other than keep my daughter as happy as a baby can be kept... and write. So over the coming weeks my thoughts, feelings and observations of the COVID-19 outbreak will be written - partly for my own sake, but also partly, I hope, for the interest, entertainment, and maybe even comfort of others. 

My 'one last': a small, tactile object made by a friend and neighbour.

It was only a week ago that people were still merely being 'asked' by the government to practise 'social distancing'. I watched passers-by out of my window, took note of Facebook posts, and acknowledged my own inclinations, and knew it couldn't work. The problem is that humans - quite rightly, for we have evolved as social animals! - are addicted to social interaction. As such, it was far too easy to justify crossing the hazy barrier of social distancing. "It's just one trip to the shops". "It's just a walk with my Mum." "One time can't hurt, can it?" "Lockdown is coming soon - this is the last chance for a while!" I'm not being critical - I was just the same. On the Sunday before lockdown I went to the local pottery for an entirely non-essential purchase, for just one last chance to do something normal like browsing the shelves, and picking something out to mark my first Mother's Day. The problem, as of course governments across the UK rapidly recognised, is that 'just one' and 'one last' never really is - and that if everyone was having just one more, there would be a heck of a hangover waiting in the wings.

So now, here we are: cold turkey, more or less, with the exception of food shopping and a daily walk. It seems to me that those minimal interactions have become immensely charged: perhaps isolation means that your endorphins go into overdrive at the simple chance to talk to the butcher, or to wave across the street at a face you only vaguely recognise. The shops in the village I live in are all a stone's-throw from our front door, and in normal life I pick up stuff as I need it: I've now shifted to trying to get a big shop in one go. 'Shopping day', when I get to go to the grocer, the co-op, and the whole foods shop (a reliable source of organic pasta and bamboo toilet roll), all in the same trip, and to talk to three different shopkeepers, is a heady high. 

And then there is the craving. Before this, I would have defined myself as a sociable introvert: as a child, given the choice to go to a party or stay at home reading, I would regularly feel 'a bit tired' and just stay at home. And, to be honest, I'm probably coping better than I might be because of this: I really quite like my own company (and that of my wee family). At the same time, I have always been a tactile person, though as I've got older I've restrained it more. But now, I regularly find myself daydreaming about what it will be like when this is all over. To pat someone on the shoulder. To shake someone's hand. And it feels like a physical ache in the pit of my stomach when I think too long about seeing a friend, and giving them a giant hug.

But like I said earlier: humans are hardwired to desire social interaction, and that is ok. Relationships, connections - they are so very important, which is why this whole situation is so very difficult. So I'm going to continue enjoying my brief chats from behind a cordon, and continue looking forward to giving many of you reading this the giantest of hugs in due course. 

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