Rory Fitzgerald
It’s been a lovely lockdown so far. The sun has shone kindly over our pleasantly shrunken world. Life is simpler and there’s no longer any rush to school, to clubs or birthday parties. There are no weekend breaks or daytrips. There’s something pleasant about not having to decide what to do, for the only thing we may do is stay at home. I’m rationing the news, and am deliberately allowing my cares to confine themselves to the little rural valley in which we live.
We are fortunate to live in the countryside at a time like this. The kids can even go fishing in the stream during their breaks from home school. They have embraced online learning and, after playing in the garden each morning, they happily go to their laptops to start their work for the day. Their teachers have been fantastic. They start each day with positive and friendly messages to the kids, before providing the day’s work, with links to useful and interesting resources. Some teachers are also providing their lessons by video. My mother, a retired primary school teacher, is also giving the kids lessons online, which they love. In between lessons, the kids fly out into the garden, or up to the woods to play games and build camps.
They’ve learned about density by building little boats and slowly filling them with pebbles before they sink. They’ve learned about gravity by flying down the hill on a toy tractor. When play is used for learning, learning becomes play.
My mother-in-law is staying with us for the duration of the lockdown. More accurately, she’s staying isolated in an apartment to the side of our house. So that she could be fully isolated, we needed to have a bathroom built. As my wife works in the emergency department of our local hospital, we felt at greater risk than most of bringing the virus home. Increasingly anxious about this risk, we put a call out for a plumber on social media, and received a number of offers of help within minutes.
Two amazing local lads spent an entire weekend working on the project, until 10pm at night, until the bathroom plumbing was up and running. My wife’s anxiety levels dropped the moment she knew her mother was safe, and no longer had any need to enter the main part of the house for the bathroom. Two incredible Polish handymen then started building the bathroom and they are cheerfully plastering and tiling the shower as I write. This awful situation is bringing out the best in people. Out of a bad situation, a lot of kindness and decency has emerged.
All our lives have now changed and we can only make the most of our new realities. We saw in having to stay at home the opportunity to fulfil our longstanding ambition of having a family dog. With the kids at home every day, there’s always someone around to entertain the puppy, or to train it. The kids have loved getting to know him. When he came home initially, they even took turns sleeping alongside him, so that he wouldn’t be too lonely without his brothers and sisters.
Despite the fears we all have about the coronavirus outbreak, the world is in some ways better for having quietened. On those rare occasions when I must go out to get something essential in the shop, I notice that people are kinder, and that strangers more readily smile and acknowledge each other – from a 2m distance, of course. The kids have not left our garden for three weeks now. While they miss friends and trips to the beach, they seem in many ways happier for their confinement – for now, at least.