Strange Summer

The lockdown you have when you're not having a lockdown

I dropped off a present to Mum the other night. Her nursing home went into hard lockdown for a few weeks after three positive Covid cases amongst the staff, and she has a serious lung condition that renders her extremely vulnerable.

The door opened and I, fully masked, held out the gift to the nurse.

‘I know I can’t come in,’ I said, ‘but can you drop this off to Christine?’

‘Oh, you can come in, actually,’ the young male nurse said cheerily. ‘Rules changed today!’

He waved me in. The door closed behind me. As the nurse held a digital thermometer to my forehead, I came to my senses.

‘No, no!’ I said, backing away. ‘I can’t see Mum at the moment. Tell me to call me! She’ll understand.’

In the car, my phone blurped. Another contact notification. These are starting to serve as an odd diary, of sorts, recording every place I ever go. I even got pinged after getting my booster at the vax clinic; which was a tricky one. It’s hard to monitor for symptoms of Covid when you are experiencing booster-related symptoms of Covid.

Last year, Mums nursing home was in lockdown for months during a period where we had zero cases in the community; and if we received a contact notification, we leapt into full Hazmat iso. Now, it seems, anything goes.

Back then Stanley Tucci, resplendent in high-waisted cotton trousers, was teaching us all how to make negronis. This summer, a shift: my work Xmas party was marked with non-alcoholic beer and ‘sober gin’ (expensive cordial in heavy glass bottles.) Just gathering in a group of twelve around a table is disconcerting these days, and even though I didn’t drink, I woke with post-Xmas party remorse. Wherever you go, there you are, etc. One neural pathway at a time, my brain is pruning away the parts that know how to socialise.

Our town, an hour outside Sydney, has morphed into a holiday destination; every shop selling kale surfboards or enlightenment, and it’s impossible to get a park at the supermarket. The beach is jam-packed with family groups and unfamiliar dogs, and houses around us shapeshift, one by one, into Airbnb’s.

The days bleed into one another in their loose January shape. The sun draws a robe of clouds around herself now, depending on La Nina’s mood, and I have only two outfits: my swimmers, and my pyjamas. I take off one to don the other. When I have to put on real work clothes, they sit on me strangely, and I can’t wait to get home and peel them off again. I think I’ve finished panic-cooking, in any case. I can’t fit anything else in the freezer.

We wait.

To be honest, is it starting to feel a little weird to…. not have Covid?

Watching the governement manage this latest outbreak has been… disconcerting.

I feel like we’ve left a Mennonite compound and entered the world of the English, and everything is confusing. The shelves are bare of Panadol. There’s widespread burnout among health workers and without doubt, a looming mental health crisis. Perrotet’s announcement that those failing to record RAT tests would be fined $1000 felt like a final slap in the face.

Fining the people for failing to record results from an unavailable test which the people need because the original testing system has fallen apart after you told the people they didn’t need masks as a new, contagious variant was taking hold in the community?

Never has this meme felt more appropriate.

In another couple of weeks, my ten-year-old can have her first dose of vaccine, but until then we’re in a sort of proto-lockdown limbo; a giant chicken-pox party.

Chris Sidoti writes in the Sydney Morning Herald: “Australia has about 2.3 million children aged between five and 11. Morrison and Perrottet were willing to “let it rip” while not permitting a single one of them to be vaccinated. Having gone for 22 months with a suppression policy, wouldn’t it have made sense to hold that line for just eight more weeks to enable children to be vaccinated first? What kind of prime minister says the workforce is vaccinated and so it’s time to “let it rip”, regardless of the 2.2 million kids who aren’t protected but could be? What kind of society tolerates that? This is child sacrifice to economic gods.”

Epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre in the Saturday Paper says ‘Without adequate case finding (which relies on testing at scale) and contact tracing, we are on a runaway train coming off the rails. Testing allows us to find infected people and isolate them so they do not infect others. Now, during the Omicron wave, testing is a massive failure. Both the federal and New South Wales governments made a conscious decision to “let it rip”, but failed to plan for adequate TTIQ (test, trace, isolate, quarantine) capacity. Instead, when it was clear testing capacity was exceeded, they restricted testing to a small fraction of people. Very few people are now eligible for a polymerase chain reaction test (PCR), and rapid antigen tests (RATs) are in short supply. While it has improved the optics by hiding the true scale of cases, this has allowed unfettered transmission.’

Dr Lucy Morgan, lung specialist (and Mums old doctor; she’s lovely), says in the Sydney Morning Herald, “We are exhausted. And in responding to the unprecedented demands, the thousands of patients presenting to our hospitals every day, our capacity to manage everything else has also really changed,” she said.

My sister Sam is a nurse. This is Sam.

‘We’re all going to get it’ may be true, but for the vulnerable, elderly or immunocompromised, that’s cold comfort. The subtext for many is not ‘and then I’ll have antibodies’ but rather ‘and then I might die.’

It may be the milder Omicron that is raging throughout the land, but there’s a Delta surge too, and ‘mild’ symptoms, not requiring hospitalisation, can still be hugely debilitating, with long-term consequences (including, apparently, permanently shrunken penises. Fun fact!)

Raina MacIntyre again: ‘There is no concern in this for First Nations people, the disabled, people with chronic medical conditions, people in remote Australia or even children, who are being sent back to school at the peak of the pandemic while primary-schoolers are largely unvaccinated. The hundreds of aged-care outbreaks pass without comment in what essentially has become survival of the fittest and richest.’

Between Scomo and Pair O’Tits, life right now is like being in a relationship with two bad boyfriends. ‘Don’t worry about it, babe,’ they say, ‘it’s under control,’ but their smiles don’t reach their eyes, and even if they aren’t sporting lizard scales under those conservative, expensive suits, they are definitely running other ladies on burner phones.

I met my friend Jen for takeaway coffee and a swim in the sea pool. The high tide blasted the swell over the sea wall, and the sky lowered grey above. It was a rare face-to-face hang for me this summer. Friendship is odd during these times. We are not all on the same page, and threads of discomfort weave amongst us. My WhatsApp groups of old, beloved girlfriends bring me joy, but I struggle to see people in the real world. I feel distant, off. My retreat into the nest of home is starting to solidify from a temporary to a permanent state of being.

Middle Child and I drink coffee, cuddling the dog in the sun and reading Sapiens out loud, a slow, delicious hobby that has taken us at least a year so far, and might take another two. 10-year-old picks out ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ on the piano, singing in her clear, sweet soprano. My 15-year-old, whose adolescence has been permanently pandemic-ed in so many ways, plays the shit out of ‘Yellow Brick Road’ while she and I reach for the harmonies. ‘Gonna take a couple of vodka and tonics to get you on your feet again.’

I’ve entered that summer zone of sorting every cupboard in the house, and there’s been a kid-room changeover here, necessitating the archaeological dig under kids beds. Broken snow-globes emerge, along with unfinished cartoons and lost socks and lidless textas; all covered in sand. The sand is the work of Biggles, who is desperately, passionately in love with the dog beach down the hill. He burrows as deep as he can, building outrageously deep holes while clutching a tennis ball in his jaws, and barking rudely at exuberant puppies who try and sniff his ball. Once home, he covers the house in a light layer of sand.

Right now, we’re at that point of chaos where everything is an indescribable mess and you just have to trust that, when the sand settles, everything will be ok.

Comrades, it’s a strange summer. I hope that your mental states are steady, and if you have the virus, may your symptoms be mild. I recommend ‘local news bloopers’ on YouTube for the general lifting of the spirits, and without tooting the horn of my own workplace too hard, if you are feeling overwhelmed, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14. We’re all in this together.

Me, I’m aiming to channel a hydrated capybara for the year ahead.

Planning:

A novel, a DIY kitchen-countertop project, a rumpus-room building project which feels as though it may never get past the planning stage, a near-future road trip with the dog, and a far-off backpacking jaunt with the children through Asia.

Reading

Helen Garner’s diaries are a joy and Middle Child and I both loved The Last Days by Andrew Hunter Murray. I loved Rick Morton’s Year Of Living Vulnerably, the classic Autobiography Of A Face by Lucy Greely (although I’m yet to read Anne Patchett’s response.) Dr. Jen Gunter’s the Menopause Manifesto has been a useful read, while Carrie Brownstein’s wonderful 90’s memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl led me down a Portlandia-clip rabbit hole on YouTube. We’re back in the swing of reading Adrian Mole aloud, and lately we’ve been doing punch-needle embroidery while we listen. Gathered around the table, hands busy, but without visual stimulation, feels like a massage for the brain.

Listening

I’ve loved the Nora Ephron special on Sentimental Garbage, the Jessica Simpson series on Even The Rich, and The Assault on America exploration of the Capitol riots, especially episode 5, which explores the backstory of Josh Hawley, ‘Stop The Steal’ enthusiast, Trump apologist and potential candidate for 2024 (basically Trump plus brains: be afraid, very afraid.) Kids and I are liking the history podcast You’re Dead To Me, and I enjoyed No Strings Attached, the good kind of true crime, an exploration of a fascinating criminal mind rather than a gore-fest.

Watching:

After that Nora Ephron podcast, I watched (and re-read) Heartburn as well as When Harry Met Sally. I am absolutely loving the Sex and the City remake And Just Like That, as well as Succession, which I inhaled next to Keith in bed with my headphones on while he read articles about the English soccer league and researched his ancestors The Jolley Bastards. Keith endured my gasps and shouts of horror (sorry, children, if these permeated through from your parent’s bedroom to yours. Take it to therapy.) Together, we are re-watching Parks and Rec and The Office as an antidote to the times (hard recommend.)

Much love, comrades. x