Remembering Rainbows
It’s been one of the strangest weeks that I can remember. One by one various aspects of our daily life have simply floated away on the breeze until we are left as we are now, amidst a shrunken landscape which seemed to have closed its shutters around us all.
Seven days ago we were festive and full of the effervescent happiness of our daughter as she celebrated her fifth birthday with friends. In retrospect we were supremely fortunate with the timing of the party. The children enjoyed a lovely afternoon of rainbow unicorns, gymnastics fun and cake on a windy Sunday which was the conclusion to a weekend long celebration which had begun on the Thursday. It was declared the best birthday ever with that wonderful heartfelt enthusiasm so characteristic of little girls.
The rain moved into Los Angeles a day or so later. Heavy grey skies mirrored the murky uncertainty of just about everything as the week progressed. Each panic laden news item seemed to bring evil report of some aspect of the virus and its associated terror which stalks the globe. We have moved from the world of a week ago, when parents could chat at a birthday party and shrug as they talked of foreign conferences cancelled, to today where international travel is prohibited for the most part, store shelves are bare and people jealously guard the items they have found. Rumour, that swift winged monster of a thousand eyes, ears and tongues, gleefully spreads fear and uncertainty amongst us all. The circus really has come to town it seems.
With schools and offices closed my immediate family will be together on a daily basis. My husband will be working from home while I put on my teacher’s hat for our daughter and our son’s high school moves to remote learning. Routines will change and we will all adjust to this new and unfamiliar territory which no one can see the end of at present. With international travel suddenly not an option, for the first time in ten years I find myself facing the prospect of being unable to plan when I will see my parents or siblings. It’s a sobering reminder of just how much I take for granted and of the fact that all the beautiful connections which we share with loved ones in this life will inevitably come to their end. All that there is to do is to move forward with a confident and open heart in the hope that we can all cherish one another during the coming days and make good use of the situation in which we find ourselves.
