TW: Covid lockdowns.
GreenWorks
Trapped inside with nothing green visible through the window, Laurie can’t remember what grass looks like, or feels like under her feet.
She’s read so many books, the piles nearly block her view of rooftops and sky. Friends leave them outside her door, along with food, toilet paper, bleach. They used to leave empty promises too – See you soon – but the promises stopped.
Someone on TV suggested injecting bleach to inoculate against the virus, but it’s the insanity Laurie wants to escape. She chuckles. A more certain use for the bleach. She stares at the bottle. It’s green.
Extroduction
(A reminder that the extro is totally optional – my stories are intended to stand alone, this is just extra info for those who wish to dig deeper.)
I avoid talking about those years as much as I can. It feels like a lifetime ago and yet, even typing this, all those emotions rush back in, the tears well and my hands shake. Still, as soon as I saw Susan’s photo, that’s where the muse went and I rarely succeed in steering her course. Laurie is fictional though, and her lockdown sounds bleaker than mine ever was. Greenworks, by the way, is a brand of green (both in colour and in its environmental claims) surface cleaner here in Canada.
I always hated those “we’re in this together” slogans from rich, powerful men who were often breaking their own rules anyway. We were NEVER all in the same boat. Some of us were riding the waves in luxury yachts with servants waiting on us hand and foot; some of us were clinging to the sides of a leaky dinghy.
Still, we are all on the same earth, and that’s how I like to interpret this song and the beautiful video that goes with it.
elmowrites 
One thing I do miss about those lockdown years was the time suddenly available to read, and other long put off hobbies. It did drag on in the end though!
I must be the only person who had LESS time during those lockdowns. Well, maybe me and all the other parents-of-smalls. Awful, awful times.
I wonder whether any politician will ever again dare say “we’re all in it together”
If they do, I’ll be in line to throw rotten eggs.
Ugh, please no other pandemic during my lifetime. I’m one of those who didn’t have time all of a sudden, but more work than ever as an ‘essential worker’. I’m not angry or sad, it was necessary. These were exhausting years.
I agree most of the precaution were necessary (the treatment of children in my jurisdiction not so much), but I reserve the right to be both angry and sad. As you say, never again.
I totally understand that. Children were losing so much.
Yes, insanity sums up that time indeed. My daughter locked her husband in the bedroom for two weeks until he was clear of covid. Strangely, neither I or my daughter caught the virus from him. I think he was having us on! They were living with me at the time, while their move into a new house was continually delayed.
I lived in an isolation bubble(??) looking after my elderly mother, who lived further away.
Yes insanity.
My husband shut himself in a bedroom too while his vulnerable father stayed with us. 3 months later, my FIL caught it in a supermarket and didn’t even have symptoms. The things we did…
It’s so strange remembering those times. It feels as though it was in another universe. Life felt surreal. You’ve caught it (the feeling, not the virus 😳) in your story. Losing touch with the natural world, the social world, the crazy things some people said (Bleach? Really?).
I agree it feels like a fiction now, and that’s to those of us who experienced it. What history will say about the things we did, who knows?
You captured that moment in time really well here. The lonliness really shows through, the madness and boredom too.
Thanks Laurie, sorry to transport you back there!!!
The irony of “We’re all in it together” was laughable. But the restricitions were not laughable, and I don’t miss them at all. So happy it seems we’re not facing them now, although there was some talk of it again during the winter flu season.
I don’t think people will stand for it again. Winter virus season was brutal round here this year, almost every family I know had pneumonia or bronchitis strike. But nobody even thought about closing the schools.
Not here, either. And no one mandated masks, either. And we got through it 🙂
The irony of “We’re all in it together” was laughable. But the restricitions were not laughable, and I don’t miss them at all. So happy it seems we’re not facing them now, although there was some talk of it again during the winter flu season.
Happy those days are over. I hope she gets out to feel the grass. Well done.
Thanks
Dear Jen,
It’s strange to realize that lockdown was 4 years ago already. I painted 42 paintings in 2020.
You set the stage well.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Thanks Rochelle. It’s nice to hear someone did something productive during those times.
it is a bluff and will always remain a bluff, the truth is that everyone is in his boat
They were strange times indeed. I remember going on my daily permitted walk with my husband, and seeing people approach on a narrow pavement, that vacillation – who was going to cross to the other side of the road? You brought it back nicely.
I don’t know about ‘nicely’, Sandra, but I’ll take it! As you ay, strange times indeed. (Daily permitted walk. What were we thinking?)
The insanity really was almost too much! I never quite understood the stay inside part, as sun is so good for our immune systems.