Four Months Later

When I left work in the middle of March on the very day it was announced schools, alongside almost everything else do do with “normal” life were closing, I still didn’t expect life to tilt so suddenly and completely. I’ve had a privileged and sheltered life thus far. No great hardships have ever darkened my door and I consider myself to have been very, very lucky.

We haven’t suffered a lot since March. We’ve had to adapt to life, like everyone else. I’d never done my grocery shopping online and we got a takeway so rarely I can’t remember the last one we had before this phase of our lives. I ordered facemasks for all of us, thinking even as I placed the order that this was a bit of a waste of money because we probably wouldn’t even use them.

I bought fancy hand sanitiser because the cheap stuff couldn’t be found in any shops. I bought cheap hand sanitiser when it was available again, and then realised I had been spoiled by the fancy stuff.

I haven’t been on a train, bus or Luas since the day I left the office in March. We stuck grimly to the 2 km rule, then the 5 km rule and then the rule about travelling only within our county. We resigned ourselves to cancelling family lunches in restaurants and then cancelling our family holiday.

We got used to home being work and work being home and everything being not quite as good as usual. I learned what SeeSaw was, and was secretly pleased at my children’s small acts of rebellion when some of the work really wasn’t something that they wanted to do.

Standards in our household dropped dramatically. We’re all wearing clothes that are a little bit worn, a little bit stained and a little best past their best. For the first time in my life, I don’t really care. I let my nails go au naturale. I didn’t wear makeup for weeks at a time. The house never really felt clean and tidy because we were all here, all of the time, doing all of the things (work, school, socialising) here without respite.

I know I’ll look back on some of this with rose tinted glasses, the way I look back fondly on other aspects of my life that weren’t particularly pleasant at the time. I know I’ll regret not “making the most” of this time. I should have started couch to 5k sooner/done more decluttering/organised some cupboards/written some more meaningful stuff/made Eldest Orchid keep up with her diary etc, etc etc.

But on reflection, we’ve been lucky and me and my family remember nothing else from this time I hope its that we are lucky and many haven’t been so lucky. And that wearing a mask and applying hand sanitiser 2,359 times a day once we leave the house are pretty comfortable problems to have right now.

Reeling in Repeal

 

It’s been a whole year since we repealed the eighth. This week last year, I was very, very worried. And nervous. And hopeful. And anxious. I was uplifted by my journey home from work the day before the vote, being handed a leaflet by canvassers who lifted my spirits. A leaflet I stuck up on the door before we rushed off to school and which is now in a box, along with a copy of the Irish Times from the Monday after the referendum and our repeal sweatshirts and badges.

I don’t think I’ve fully grasped what the campaign and vote and result really meant to me until quite recently. I needed a break from all things repeal, so while I followed the passage of the legislation and the implementation of services very closely, I listened to little analysis and read even less about what was going on. Some distance was necessary.

I’ve slowly started listening to some podcasts from around this time last year, featuring those I cheered and those I loathed. It’s been somewhat cathartic and frustrating. The same arguments come up, the same lies are repeated and the same frank and brutal truths cut through the nonsense.

Something I’ve watched many times is this short video. It was hard to watch, but covered so many of the emotions I felt. I don’t think I will ever forget 10.01pm on 25th May 2018, when I couldn’t believe that exit poll, until I did and it was all real.

Thirty Five Is Not Twenty Five (Part II)

As per my previous post, one project on my to-do list was sorting out my photos. I was feeling productive last night as it’s a light week in work so I gathered all the photos from broken frames, various boxes and a couple of bags and started sorting.

It was a lot harder than I expected. I found a lot of photos from college days that I’d tucked away and forgotten about completely. It was difficult looking at my younger, slimmer self. Like the Sunscreen Song told me when I was 18, I was not as fat as I imagined.

Looking at the photos was like looking at a different person, which, in many ways, I was. I am not the person I was when I was 18 and starting college, or the 23 year old I was the day I graduated, or the 25 year old visiting Barcelona, or the 28 year old getting engaged in Sorrento, or the 29 year old getting married and going on honeymoon.

My new year’s resolution was to join and gym and improve my health and, if I’m honest, my self esteem. The photos gave me pause for thought. That skinnier, younger woman wouldn’t have believe the older, softer, rounder (in many more ways than my figure) woman if I told her what paths her life would take her.

That skinnier younger woman hadn’t evolved much in her thinking on abortion rights. She knew little of the eighth amendment. She hadn’t developed the ability to see more of the world in shades of grey rather than in black and white. She didn’t give herself (or many others) much of a break. She was too hard on herself.

The photos have been sorted-ish. I haven’t seen albums I like and I don’t really feel like looking through many of them again so soon. Thirty Five is not Twenty Five, in all sorts of ways.