I am trying to see this strange and uncertain situation we're in in a more positive light. I am in a position where I no longer go to work, no longer balance antisocial hours and school runs, or really manage time. Of course, there are many pressures and stresses that come with the current restrictions, but in a way I am experiencing a kind of freedom too. Despite having two young children to entertain and educate and a husband recovering from a hip replacement, I've suddenly found I have time to do things I never got round to before.
A few weeks ago I started putting up the plasterboard that got my family into our current mess in the first place*. It took a few days and it was hard at times, but I felt satisfied to be getting something done. Simultaneously, in the evenings, I picked up a crochet pattern I've wanted to try for many years, one that I hadn't started simply because I needed to download and print it, and I didn't know how to work our printer. Not only did I print the pattern, but I learned to use the printer in the process. I started baking bread again, mainly because we ran out and were depending on others to shop on our behalf, and we weren't always organised enough to arrange this in time, but we had a good supply of bread flour. I tried a new recipe with the children: we made hot cross buns on Good Friday for the first time, after many years of aspiring and failing to make them for Easter.
I don't know when life will return to normal, when I'll go back to work and the children will start school again, and I suddenly find myself snowed under with numerous responsibilities and very little time to myself, but I am trying to see this time as an opportunity, a reprieve. It's a deliverance of sorts, the chance of a lifetime to break from the norm and discover ourselves and what really matters. And so I am using this reprieve as productively and industriously as I can, with the hope that whenever we return to our old routines, I might have got ahead with various projects that have been on hold so long, and perhaps even achieved something worthwhile. I can only hope that one day I'll look back and see this as a turning point in my life.
*my husband's accident happened when he tried to move ten pieces of plasterboard in one go.
