Lyn, Anthony, Nicholas, Emily, Aria

May 2020: Sydney

Anthony (9), Lyn’s son

“Kids my age are generally not interested in world affairs. I’m in grade three and it’s probably the first time ever, other than around World Wars and the bubonic plague, that kids and adults in every single country of the world have heard about the same life threatening world affair, Coronavirus.

Even my four-year-old little sister knows how this 'sickness' has changed her way of life dramatically. There are no visits to the beach, no sports, no friends coming over for playdates. We are not even allowed to see other members of our family.

I have noticed lots of new changes around the house, such as, the way mum has been cooking new things all the time and the fact that we are mostly doing things together, a lot more than we used to, because we are all here at the same time. We have been going on more bush walks and playing games. I've been playing a lot of basketball with mum and have gotten so much better.

A few of the other things I’ve been doing are; practising my saxophone, learning how to play “Havana,”  doing a lot of cross country training on the treadmill every day; having Facetime and Zoom playdates, card games and Scrabble. We just got our new dog, Aria so we have a lot of time to bond with her. 

Currently, my seven-year-old brother, my little sister and my crazy three-year-old Samoyed are wildly doing circuits around the lounge room. The noise is deafening. Fun! FUN! I can't wait to join them. My life under lockdown is pretty darn GOOD!”

Lyn, mother-of-three

“We were all in shock for the first two weeks. I’d sit up at night and watch the American and British news and it was just shock. But once we got over the shock of it, we realized it was quite an opportunity to have some fun.

We’d just gotten a dog, Aria, before all of this happened, so she’s been a wealth of entertainment and happiness. We let her off the leash for the first time to play with other dogs this week. Aria’s never been off a leash in her life and she was like a ballerina. She was pirouetting on her back legs, doing 20 sideways somersaults in a row. It was a moment of joy that made the kids and I fall about laughing. 

Life’s not as busy, everybody’s happy and healthy and everything’s just a team environment. Anthony said to me, “mum your cooking is so much better now.” And I explained, ‘Anthony, it’s not that my cooking wasn’t great before but I just have more time to do things’ and I do it with the kids. So now the kids cook dinner. Emily has become a whizz at banana bread.

Emily had her birthday in isolation. She had 200 balloons blown up in the lounge room and streamers everywhere and Coco Pops for breakfast which was a mega hit and we just played games of her choosing all day. The kids really miss their friends and that interaction. 

Often you think you can put things over the top of kids’ heads and they don’t pick up on it, but Anthony has really picked up on the effect of social distancing on others. He’s noticed the effect on his little sister, Emily because she only just started preschool this year. She’d had her first play dates with friends she’d met and that was really important to her because she hadn’t been to day care. He picked up on that. It’s interesting that he’s put a positive spin on it all. He can see the good and bad parts and the compensating factors. 

The hardest question I’ve had to answer from my kids is “is it safe to go back to school?” because everybody has had to distance so much. They’ve been drilled about doing the right thing when they’re out and washing their hands and everything, so the idea of going back to school is just a bit scary, because they know it hasn’t gone away, they just know that it’s not as bad now. I reassured them by saying ‘I would never put you in a position of doing something that wasn’t safe.’

I actually had a Stockholm Syndrome moment the other day when they started to ease restrictions. I went, ‘oh no, but I like my life now.’ But that did pass fairly quickly when I thought, ‘yay, no more homeschooling.’ I even like that part because you get to know what the kids are doing, you get to help them, you get to see the little sparks light up when they learn something new. Their nanna has been helping them on FaceTime which has been really nice for her because she’s alone.

There’s someone who has been going around my local area writing in beautiful handwriting, “see the space in between as a gift of life and love.” The pandemic has taught me to keep reminding myself not to get caught up in the issues of the P&C or the issues of going back to work or the busyness of this or that. 

When this is all over I’m looking forward to going out to a very crowded bar in the city. The solitude is lovely and calming but it’s also good to have that other side of life as well.”