I was all set, as of a few days ago, to write a post about how our family makes its own traditions and how that is a beautiful thing. To wit, the way we bounce around at Christmastime and have only spent it away from a hotel once since we became Aussies, but that we have celebrated it for the past few years consistently in July by going to our favourite hotel in the mountains, where they display lights and trees and Santa roams a buffet waiting to take photos with families. We were meant to go there next week.
Then Covid showed back up.
First, The Husband was quarantined because of his job in the city, one of the current hotspots. Which didn’t really work for me, because without the rest of us isolated, that left chauffeuring and errands to me. Then, later that day came the news that we were all under lockdown, in fact, and not for the one week previously prescribed to TH and other citygoers, but for two.
No Blue Mountains for us.
We had been so close! Last year’s trip was lacking compared to the years prior–Covid hadn’t closed down the hotel but had rendered some of its best features–the arcade, the indoor pool–shuttered. But this year, fullness beckoned. Some close friends were booked in on days that overlapped with ours. The mulled cider and wine by the fireplace were within our reach. Until they weren’t.
Now, we’re back in lockdown, a year after the original version. It’s weird–Little Brother’s outdoor soccer camp made the cut, and plenty of shops are still open, but we’re otherwise stranded at home or to walks around it. Luckily, those walks can lead us in a matter of minutes to some of the most beautiful views and beaches on earth, and we’re not likely to get shot here, so it’s still sort of an “I’d rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona” situation, but it’s not what I’d call the best. My mental health, still fragile from the last time this shit went down, is currently on back-order, and while the rainbows brought by the rain are glorious, they’re still around because of…well, rain.
But there are all kinds of rain, aren’t there? Before the lockdown, back in those sweet summer-child days when we frolicked through the school gate and into cinemas, maskless, the boys’ classes both invited parents through for a showcase of all their work. LB’s writing included a description of the school’s fireworks night in which he described the explosions as “sparkling rain,” and I haven’t been able to get that image out of my head since.
So I’ve been measuring my days not with coffee spoons or big outings but by the liturgy, by reading several books at once, by consuming Netflix and Amazon recommendations. By walks and runs, quick grocery trips, text chains. By new recipes for old favourites, and the kids’ ideas for “clubs” like cooking, drawing, and dog-cuddling. By dropping LB off for soccer camp and heading out with The Kid for a bush walk with a view, during which I tell him the ways we’re alike so that I can clear the path a bit in sharing what took me decades to learn. By feeling how our stories get told and retold, a bit better each time.
“…a voiceless awe at the passing of time. The way everything changes. The way everything stays the same. The way those things are bigger than I am, and more than I can hold,” writes Katherine May in my current favourite, Wintering. The way that some days, “more than I can hold” feels like a curse, then later that same day, like a bigger gift than I could imagine.