Shining On

It is 10pm on a Wednesday night and I am watching an exceptional and deeply moving film about communication, love, loss and heartache. It centres around two star struck lovers communicating anonymously via email; Netflix recommended it as a popular film choice so I dive right in. An iconic piece of cinematography, yes, you’ve got it, it’s the critically acclaimed You’ve Got Mail. I continue to be shocked by how Meg Ryan actually walks in real life. Watch it again and report back. 

Anyway, at 10pm I do an idle social media scroll and see that the International Space Station will be passing over this quiet Yorkshire village at 10:02pm. My social calendar is extremely quiet at the moment but I just want to let you know that I am a bit of a closet nerd my friends, even during normal times. I pause the film just at a nail-biting moment where Meg Ryan is doing yet another pretty crying face.

[It always astounds me in films how the lead actors remain so beautiful when crying and are able to respond to life dilemmas with a single, solitary tear rolling down their cheek. I say this particularly for my friends and family (who have witnessed me watching Marley and Me, responding to significant life stress or have recounted a story of a couple in love to me; yes, that includes verbal accounts of The Notebook or About Time) who have witnessed my individual style of crying. My style of crying reader is more akin to guttural mooing and a weep that comes from a place deep within my soul, snotting and snorting until the cows come home. I wear my heart on my sleeve and a symptom of this is involuntarily crying at the smallest of prompts. If I think about many things too deeply, my eyes get wet and when I try to talk I sound like I have cake stuck in my throat. I think of the last time I cried. I’m not ready to share it with you yet as I might cry again and no one likes a wet blog. I wonder when you last cried?]

I take my cup of decaf tea out on the patio. The sky looks like June, not May. It is 10pm and the sky is a faded deep blue, not black, like an Instagram filter. I can see three bright stars, the strongest ones are shining on. We are here, they say, watching you all; how the world has changed. I look up to the sky and text my sisters to tell them I am awaiting the ISS.

[It may have become clear to you that I cannot do much at the moment without texting one, or both, of my sisters. Or my entire family group or friends for that matter. I am a Gemini, an incessant communicator. Or an ‘external processor’ as someone in my professional life told me recently. I think that is a fancy phrase for “Say What You See” and I have always been like this as long as I can remember. On a quest to give and receive information about actual, real-life things and feelings. Tell me something new. Tell me something I don’t know about you. tell me when you last cried. If my family and friends tire of my monologues and continual questions then they never tell me this. And so I continue.]

I take a sip of my tea and look to the skies. I see it. Brighter than I have seen it before, a little ball of light hurtling through the sky, brighter than any star and never fading, following its path. On its mission. I take a deep breath and think and wish. I am so blessed to be under the stars and have absolute peace in this moment.

And then I hear it.

It’s a sound you would only recognise if you had seen a full day of drinking with me in my twenties and successfully made it to 3am without turning in. I can only describe it as the sound of someone who has been mixing their Malibu with Archers and Stella since 5pm and then deciding that the only way to kick the party off is by singing to the world. This person chooses the female vocal from the title track of A Star is Born. And absolutely goes for it with no regard for the sleeping babies, families and pensioners in their houses, all around. I record it on a voice file and send it to my sisters. The pitch is eye watering and the volume incredible. I am both amused and appalled in equal measure. Maybe I am getting older. Maybe I am not tolerant enough. But the people having parties every other night are the same people clapping for key workers every Thursday.

I think that lockdown has really forced us all to look at ourselves and each other in microscopic detail. Irritated by your neighbours? Listen to them 24/7! Struggling at work? Try and work from home in the middle of a global pandemic, if you’ve got kids then parent them simultaneously whilst trying to homeschool! Want to give your partner a wedgie every time they leave the toilet seat up? Do it twenty times a day! Hate your life? Look in the mirror uninterrupted for eight weeks! I’m generalising and making it sound simplistic but I still think the point is there. Whatever you were struggling with before lockdown, your life choices, work, relationships, whatever it is, now it is amplified. Now you cannot run from it and you are having to stare at the elephant in the corner of your living room sweat it out in the heat of your own four walls. I think of the people I know who are experiencing stress and hardship and I cannot hug them. I cannot do enough to support them. Whilst virtual technology is a good bridge during this time it does not replace human connection and face to face interaction. You cannot get a full sense of how someone is through snatched phone and video calls. But we stick to the rules and continue to do what we can within our own home. Waiting for the day when we cuddle people again.

The thing is, my daughters are happy. They are loving the time at home with both their parents and whilst some days there are tears or squabbles, we are exceptionally lucky. It feels hard to get the balance right between making the most of the situation whilst still acknowledging to ourselves the trauma of the outside world. We continue to persevere with home education when we can but most of the learning is more practical than structured lessons. The telly is on more than usual and sometimes I let the guilt fairy taunt me that I am not doing enough and that Octonauts is not a proper educational tool.

[We are pretending that we are at the beach hunting for animals in the garden and my daughter says:

“I’m going to collect a crab and an urchin, hopefully who are in symbiosis with each other.” Me, feeling very stupid: “What is symbiosis?!” “Symbiosis is two creatures who work together and depend on each other either for food or protection.” Me, knowing that I have definitely not taught her that: “Oh wow. Where did you learn that?” “Octonauts of course Mummy.” “Oh well. Good job I’ve not been stressed about the amount of Octonauts you’ve watched recently.”]

And so we persevere, we take each day at a time. The garden and house is looking much less like a squat and more like an actual functioning family home but we have no one to share it with. We are still not on top of the washing. We ran out of real coffee this morning and I have had to have decaf. We get the girls dressed every morning but struggle to get them to keep clothes on past 9am. Some days we are tired for no good reason. We have woken up to an ant invasion. None of these things are major issues compared to what’s going on outside. We keep going and try to be gentle with each other, even when my hormones give me (slight) rage and my husband has to go to ground for a few days in fear of his life.

My youngest daughter is two going on twenty. She has been calling me ‘Darlin’ for the entirety of lockdown. I am sat with a cup of tea minding my own business, trying to be as inoffensive as possible to my children and she says:

“Mummy?” 

“Yes sweetheart?” I reply. 

“Just to clarify, I forgive you.” 

After a long pause I simply reply: “Thank you.” 

So as it goes, the kids probably are alright. It’s just us that need an education.

Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper: “In the sha-ha-sha-ha-low In the sha-ha-sha-la-la-la-low In the sha-ha-sha-ha-ha-low We're far from the shallow now”