Day Three Hundred and Sixty-five

Feest Isolation Days –14  March 2021

A WHOLE YEAR OF LOCKDOWN!!

I’m lost for words.  I know, I know that doesn’t happen very often!  But I really don’t know what to say.  It’s been a year.  A whole year.  An entire year of our life spent in Lockdown. 

For us, that’s meant a great deal of time spent not seeing family and friends, not travelling, or going to the theatre or out to dinner or to concerts or swimming or to cafes or having friends over for dinner or going to their place for a meal.  No impromptu breakfasts out, or pub lunches after walks in the country. No visits to shops to buy the weekly food or the occasional shop to try on the latest outfit.  No choir concerts or weekly rehearsals among friends.  No chats with shopkeepers about this or that, no people.  This year was NOT in our retirement plan!

How have we managed? 

After an entire year, we are thankful that we have made it so far without picking up Covid and having to deal with all of the horrific ramifications that could entail.  We managed because there is nothing else to do but carry on.  However, not only have we managed but somehow we seemed to have grown and thrived during this strange time.  How does that happen?  We are fortunate.  We are a happy caring couple and are grateful that we had each other to spend the year with.  Somehow an excellent relationship deepened in ways we couldn’t have imagined.  Creating new routines both together and separately helped us to readjust to a new life.  After the realisation hit that we would have to dramatically change how we live, we did.  There were a few tears at times as the frustration of what we couldn’t do needed to be accepted, but then we set about our “new” Lockdown lives. 

We have the sort of resilience that comes with age and experience.  We also have the good fortune of living in a big happy house with a magnificent garden.  We learned that if exercise couldn’t be swimming it could be cycling indoors and out, if we couldn’t do our Pilates in class, we could do it at home.  It isn’t the same, but we could keep in touch with our family and friends on Zoom, or by phone or text or What’s Ap or even write to them regularly!

This blog project belongs to us both.  I do the lion’s share of the writing, and Terry posts what I write.  I haven’t a clue how to do that after a year as I never have done it!  That’s what partnerships are about – not being clueless but about having roles that work for each of you.  I wash, you dry, I shop you cook.  I collect the bins from inside you carry them out.  These activities develop, we play to our strengths and importantly we share the load. We are still, after all these years, very much in love.  How does that happen?  One of the enduring and beautiful mysteries of life.  You know it you’ve got it, and can’t imagine it if you don’t.  I hope your Lockdown time has also helped you to thrive and deepen your relationship.

The next hurdle for us all now is going to be unlocking!  We are exceedingly pleased to have had the first dose of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine.  Covid numbers are falling in the UK. The roadmap to Unlocking has been published and each increment means more easing of our situations.  What will we be happy to do?

Years ago, long before we were married, Terry made a series of educational videos for transplant patients, and I was the presenter.  There was one scene that stays with us now.  A man who had home dialysis returns from hospital after having had a successful kidney transplant.  His dialysis machine is still in the room.  His wife asks him if he’d like a cup of tea and a biscuit?  “No dear, I can’t, too much fluid”.  How about an orange?  “No dear, I can’t, too much potassium”.  Some cheese?  “No dear, I can’t, too much salt and protein for my kidney condition “ the man says.  The wife looks at him and says, “you did have a transplant didn’t you dear?”  He had not come to terms with his new reality, his new normal.

We are all going to be stepping gingerly into the next phase of our life.  We will all have to tiptoe into the things we feel comfortable doing and accept that we can move forward out of lockdown.  Slowly, carefully and deliberately.  After an entire year and then some, we will have to learn to once again live together in a different way. 

We are vaccinated and ready to move forward.  Who knows what we will be getting up to in the months ahead?  Whatever it is, we will do so feeling pretty certain that we will be fine.  We’ve managed a tough year with aplomb (great word).

If I had to give us a grade on a scale of one to ten, I’d say we both come out with tens!  Not bad for a tricky year.  What would you give yourself and your partner for these many weeks? Don’t be hard on yourself.  That’s one thing we don’t ever do anymore.  And we try not to be too hard on others either.  Everyone has struggled in one way or another with this year. 

Love and being loved is never ever to be taken for granted.

You’ve helped to give me focus.   Thanks for reading.  Let’s see what next year brings!

Enjoy and keep up the good work.  We aren’t out of this yet but we are getting somewhat closer as each day passes. 

With love,

Kathy x

And to all of you Mothers out there….Happy Mother’s Day!  Here’s a little extra something all about that for you which I wrote for today on the Joy Club

Joy Club Blog – Thoughts on Mother’s Day

Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother’s Day in the United States

March 14 2021

It’s not Mother’s Day yet!  Surely there are nearly two months to go until Mother’s Day!  It’s the wrong month, it’s only March, Mother’s Day is in… Ahh… “Toto, I don’t think we’re  in Kansas anymore!”

It never occurred to me in a million zillion years that I would be a Mum and not a Mom for a start.  Or that my son would have  an accent that would make American girls swoon with delight when they heard it.  I grew up in America, and moved to the UK when I was twenty six.  Marriage wasn’t on my mind then, let alone children.  Sometimes these things just happen.  And happen they both did. But March for Mother’s Day?  Nope that’s held in May! If you reside in the States that is. As it happens, Mother’s Day occurs somewhere in the world in all but three months of the year, January, April and September.

Where did this celebratory day come from? In Britain, along with so many British traditions, it’s been around for a long, long time.  Since the Middle ages in fact. In the UK, Mothering Sunday always occurs on the 4^th Sunday of Lent.  Originally, the celebration was about Mother Church.  People went to the church they were baptised in, or their local cathedral which was the “mother” church for all of the parish. In 1644, “Gone Mothering” was a phrase that people used to describe what eventually become known as Mothering Sunday, or more recently, Mother’s Day.

Inspired by the American Anna Jarvis, who was lobbying for a Mother’s Day celebration there in the early 1900’s, Constance Adelaide Smith wanted to extend the celebration in Britain beyond the church to include all Mothers, and Mother Earth as well!  We have these two women to thank for our modern Mother’s Day festivities.

Ladies both, I ask you, why only one day?   Do these women have ANY idea how hard it is to be a Mother?  Actually, they didn’t.  The modern founders of Mother’s Day on both sides of the Atlantic were childless. 

I bet I’m not the only Mother who has kept those Mother’s Day cards that were given to her over the years. They remain stored away along with the memories from another time; all those nights of lost sleep in the early years, the tricky bits later on when a thousand and one things conspire to convince you that you haven’t a clue how to be a Mother.   

It’s not always easy trying to figure out what on earth you are supposed to DO in order to be a good mum.  One of the biggest lessons of Motherhood, especially as the kids get older, is that, sometimes, what you need to do is absolutely nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  For so many Mothers, this one included, that was the most difficult Motherhood lesson of all!  Mothers all over the globe want to race in there to fix, to help, to support, to make “it” better.  Whatever “it” is that needs to be made better.

Maybe we should be lobbying for a “kids” day!  Turn the tables and tell them how grateful we are for them.  Our lives would not have been the same without them that is certain!  They helped us to grow, to thrive, to live, and to love.  Without our kids, we would be different women.  Not better or worse, but different.  It’s hard to imagine Mother’s Day without our kids. Yet it was two childless women who gave us our modern Mother’s Day celebrations.  Thank you ladies.  And to you all, whenever it occurs where you live, Happy Mother’s Day!