Unspoken Feelings of Optimism

Sumner Beach

On Monday, at 11:59pm, New Zealand moved into Covid Alert Level 3. We’d been in Level 4 for four and a half weeks. With Level 4 being a full-on lock-down. Level 3 means that, in light of a national case-fatality rate of just above 1%, no current community transmission, and with international borders remaining closed, some businesses can re-open whilst maintaining strict social distancing rules.

Tradespeople can go back to work and retail stores can now open as long as there is no direct customer contact. That is to say, telephone or online orders can be fulfilled if they provide a delivery or contactless pickup service. So goods dropped into the boot of your car and such. The same goes for restaurants, cafes, and off-licences, unless they have drive through facilities. Like MacDonalds. Where customers were queuing for Big Macs at 4:30am on opening day. I’m going to go with that being a ‘because I can’ thing and acknowledge that we all have different ways of getting through this. But the bottom line of this new alert level is there mustn’t be any client-facing work unless it is deemed essential and all physical distancing and social interaction rules still apply as in Level 4. Which means that on paper, as far as my little life goes, things don’t change a great deal. Except they have.

Monday was ANZAC Bank Holiday. It felt like an extra Sunday, which is when it dawned on me that although the days are still smudging together and time seems to have sped up as it’s slowed down, I’ve been having more and more Saturday feelings. Saturdays are more exciting than Sundays and, ever since I was a child, I’ve liked them better. I’m grateful they’re back. Sundays are all very well and not without value but a month of them in one hit is definitely enough.

But in real time, today is Friday. And on Tuesday the kids went back to school. Back to school doesn’t mean what it used to, but on-line lessons have resumed and there’s an early morning buzz in the kitchen again. We’re no longer staying up late eating liquorice and watching movies and addictive and endless Netflix box-sets. But we’re getting up early with, at the very least, a sketch of plan in place.

As the sun came up on the first morning of Level 3, the whole Choc family and I headed out for a run. Winter is fast approaching and the days are getting noticeably shorter. The air is sharp and icy cold in the mornings and I’ve put gloves on my month-long shopping list. As we trotted down the hill, we were excited and noisy and got some sideways looks from solo exercisers who must have thought we had thrown caution to the wind and were breaching bubble protocols. We didn’t care because we weren’t but we laughed like naughty children all the same. I could sense that something had shifted for all of us and I smiled deep down inside.

Since then we’ve been running together every morning. The youngsters sometimes start 5 or 10 minutes later but easily catch up and then peel off to do something of higher intensity. But the feeling of togetherness remains and we all meet back at the house at around about the same time for Mr Choc’s press-up challenge and any more exercising or stretching that needs to be done. Breakfast happens as it happens after that but coffee and fruit-laden porridge have become mainstays. So I’m enjoying Level 3 and this new rhythm and I’m not going to look too closely at the unspoken feelings of optimism for fear that they’ll fade under the scrutiny.

Later today, when the working day is done, we’re going to drive to the beach. I’m hugely excited. I miss the ocean like mad.