PHOTO BY LIA CROWE
Lockdown lessons — sort of
Once on a trip home from Milan, Italy, we sat in a plane on the tarmac for three hours, unsure of when it would take off. That’s how I feel right now: we’ve collectively bounced out of the COVID Twilight Zone and into this strange “time out” period that seems a bit like we’re all grounded at the airport, unsure of when the flight will resume. Should I book that appointment for November? Plan that weekend getaway for mid-October? Should we be looking at Christmas flights for our US-based kids? It’s been a fascinating ride, providing all sorts of fodder for discussion and analysis (a writer’s dream). Where to start? One popular topic of conversation these days is “what I learned in the lockdown.” I’m not going to lie, there were parts of the lockdown that I loved. For the first time in many, many years, my brain felt uncluttered. I’d wake up each day with typical morning urgency—“What do I have to do today?”— and then sink back into the pillows: “Well, nothing really.” So here are a few things I learned in lockdown, or at least thought I did. I can sort of live without hockey: As avid hockey fans with two teams (I’ll apologize here for my Maple Leafs-loving husband’s poor taste in teams), we spend a lot of time watching and talking hockey. I’m also big on hockey pools and stats and hockey news, so add in time spent googling “Canuck news” and it all starts to fill up your brain. We actually agreed during lockdown that it was a bit of a relief not to have any spring hockey angst. The need for a haircut reaches critical mass: Having missed my every-two-months visit to the salon by about five days, I reached hair crisis mode one month into lockdown and undertook a disastrous bangs-cutting session. But what do you know? The bangs sort of grew into their new look and the rest of the hair followed. I liked my COVID hair. (My husband? That’s another story. Even a ball cap couldn’t hide the COVID calamity that sprang from his head.) When I finally went for a haircut, my stylist admitted she was struck by how many of her clients had grown into their COVID hair. My husband is LOUD on the phone. While my husband and I have both worked from home for years, the landline has never been a big part of our day. I recall him once complaining that my elder daughter was a bit loud on the phone. Well, holy Hannah! Loud? You want to hear loud? Call my husband. And worse? He paces…he walks and talks, forcing me to scuttle from room to room to avoid the mayhem. We spend a lot of money going out. One striking aspect of lockdown was our bank account. Yes, there was less going in … but man oh man, with restaurants and bars shut down, there was a lot less flooding out. I also discovered that while lockdown might be an introvert’s happy place, a multi-participant Zoom meeting is not. (There’s no hiding from 30 sets of eyes zooming in as you speak.) Finally, I learned that I love the idea of gardening much better than the action; and that even with all the time in the world, I’m still not into baking. So here we are now in this strange “in-between time,” reviewing the lessons we thought we learned in lockdown, wondering what the next months hold—and whether this plane is ever going to leave the tarmac. But, no matter. Hockey is back, so I’ll just google “Canucks news” while I wait.
Susan Lundy Editor
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