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DAYS OF OUR (LOCKED DOWN) LIVES
I look in the mirror and an ageing Medusa head stares back – greying, straggly, unruly tendrils of hair make up my hair 'style'.
If “the suit maketh the man”, surely it must hold true that “hair maketh the woman”, I think to myself. Many of us, it seems are sporting hairstyles not of our choosing, courtesy of our current lockdown.
However, just as I begin to despair for my dishevelled appearance, I stop to spare a thought for my hairdresser, closed now for going on to three months! Undoubtedly, her rent and all other fixed overheads must still be paid. How is she coping, I wonder. Has she been able to reach out and obtain financial support or has it all been too hard? Customers like me will return, but I'm too aware that times like these can easily send a small enterprise to the wall.
With not much else to do, my mind turns to cooking. It is one of the joys of our retired lives to cook for our adult children and grand daughters. Each week our little clan of eight would gather for family dinner - such extravagance, by current standards.
In the absence of being able to feed our brood in our home, hubby and I have taken to doing food drops at their door. Luckily they all live within the allowable 5km bubble but it still feels like partaking in an illicit drug deal. “Edible hugs” we call these offerings - a reminder of the absence of any physical contact between us. Did I once read that children fail to thrive when deprived of touch? And, being Italian, we have always been a very touchy, feely bunch….
Then I remember those with beloved family members on the other side of the world, or even in other states of Australia. With no known date for when normal travel will resume, such people live with the constant fear that they may never see an elderly parent again.
A conversation with an acquaintance serves as a vivid example. Her father died in France a few months ago and now her elderly mother has been diagnosed with cancer. For both events, my acquaintance can only offer FaceTime support and lives with the grinding anxiety of receiving news that goes from bad to worse.
I make a point of regularly checking in on a particular friend. We are trying hard to keep each other's spirits high in the absence of being able to visit. “Such wasted years”, she comments to me. Aged 76 with a soon-to-turn 80 husband, she's keenly aware the window for independent travel is closing fast. At any time their health, mobility or motivation for travel may disappear. Barry Manilow's song “All the Wasted Time” time pops into my head, and for the next few days it's an ear worm I cannot shake.
I look in the mirror and an ageing Medusa head stares back – greying, straggly, unruly tendrils of hair make up my hair 'style'.
If “the suit maketh the man”, surely it must hold true that “hair maketh the woman”, I think to myself. Many of us, it seems are sporting hairstyles not of our choosing, courtesy of our current lockdown.
However, just as I begin to despair for my dishevelled appearance, I stop to spare a thought for my hairdresser, closed now for going on to three months! Undoubtedly, her rent and all other fixed overheads must still be paid. How is she coping, I wonder. Has she been able to reach out and obtain financial support or has it all been too hard? Customers like me will return, but I'm too aware that times like these can easily send a small enterprise to the wall.
With not much else to do, my mind turns to cooking. It is one of the joys of our retired lives to cook for our adult children and grand daughters. Each week our little clan of eight would gather for family dinner - such extravagance, by current standards.
In the absence of being able to feed our brood in our home, hubby and I have taken to doing food drops at their door. Luckily they all live within the allowable 5km bubble but it still feels like partaking in an illicit drug deal. “Edible hugs” we call these offerings - a reminder of the absence of any physical contact between us. Did I once read that children fail to thrive when deprived of touch? And, being Italian, we have always been a very touchy, feely bunch….
Then I remember those with beloved family members on the other side of the world, or even in other states of Australia. With no known date for when normal travel will resume, such people live with the constant fear that they may never see an elderly parent again.
A conversation with an acquaintance serves as a vivid example. Her father died in France a few months ago and now her elderly mother has been diagnosed with cancer. For both events, my acquaintance can only offer FaceTime support and lives with the grinding anxiety of receiving news that goes from bad to worse.
I make a point of regularly checking in on a particular friend. We are trying hard to keep each other's spirits high in the absence of being able to visit. “Such wasted years”, she comments to me. Aged 76 with a soon-to-turn 80 husband, she's keenly aware the window for independent travel is closing fast. At any time their health, mobility or motivation for travel may disappear. Barry Manilow's song “All the Wasted Time” time pops into my head, and for the next few days it's an ear worm I cannot shake.