Diary Entry: Birthday in Lockdown
Last week, Metanoia editor Andrew Clark-Howard celebrated his twenty-third birthday. Here is a little reflection he wrote.
It’s my birthday today—my second birthday spent in lockdown; a pretty unlucky streak given our general state of ‘normal life’ we’ve enjoyed in Aotearoa since the beginning of the pandemic.
This time round seems less still. The incessant buzz of cars down the nearby highway seems only slightly dampened by the latest outbreak. Talking to friends and colleagues in Sydney about the perils of complacency around delta has been plenty incentive to stay home. I’m hopeful everyone else is on the same page.
The mental buzz seems a bit louder this time too. It’s hard to know how and what to feel. There are so many things to be grateful for. I live in a safe, warm home with plenty space to work—a privilege many of my neighbours in South Auckland don’t have. My vocation—reading, writing, teaching, and research—are all activities peculiarly suited for lockdown. The stack of books I panic-loaned on Tuesday looms over me, silently judging. I’m yet to pick one up.
I get off a video call with my mum and sister who wish me happy birthday. Dad’s got a cough but doesn’t want to get a test. My future mother-in-law sends me a happy birthday text despite her broken English—or rather, despite my broken Cantonese. She’d been planning to make me her famous Oreo cheesecake which, I can assure you, missing out on will be one of the greater travesties of my lockdown. Sirens go off in the background of this uneasy stillness. Planes fly overhead, sending and bringing people back home.
We have it so good here—life has, for the most part, continued as normal. We’ve experienced a quality of life, relatively stable economy, and general wellbeing unknown to the vast majority of the world. Of course, this wasn’t the case for my fiancée’s flatmate who suffered from long covid last year on a trip back from overseas. I remember the first few weeks of March so vividly. Arriving from overseas before managed isolation was compulsory, we all followed the guidelines to see out her self-isolation period. I waved through the window on my dog walks. She developed mild symptoms one day just before our last level four lockdown and got tested. I spoke at a church with plenty of old people the morning she received her positive results. She was bedridden within a week and remained so for many months. It wasn’t until November last year her post-viral fatigue eased, and she entered her ‘new normal.’
~
From my desk I watch the pale winter sun hide behind the wind and cloud cover. The sun—whose prior presence I foolishly interpreted as a reason to hang out the washing—becomes increasingly abstracted from my lockdown state, her rising and setting a mere suggestion of sleeping and waking.
These mundane topics of weather and washing lines have become the most novel features of life to observe. I find myself irritated at all the performative emails that get sent around each time we head to lockdown. “Stay safe!” “Take long walks.” “Don’t neglect your mental health.” Just let me be grumpy! I don’t want a silver lining—we all know no one wants this. Then again, I’ve sent some of those emails myself.
It’s hard to avoid feeling guilty about being grumpy. After all, so many others have it worse—the mantra rings round my head from childhood. And that’s the central turmoil I feel. I’m okay, and I know things will mostly be okay, but is it bad to just not feel up to? Lockdown’s a funk, I miss my family, and I’m probably going to procrastinate my deadlines until it becomes imminently stressful. Maybe I’m just looking for a reason to be grumpy anyway.
Our designated grocery shopper just got back. We’re cooking up a big meal tonight to celebrate and someone suggested we should just for tonight leave the sweatpants behind and dress up. Another flatmate needs picking up from the airport as he lands from a flight home within the allocated time for regional travel. Jacinda and Ashley are about to brief the nation once again. There are things to do, washing to be dried, and books to be read. I’m writing this to avoid them anyway.
Maybe I can have a happy birthday.
~
Andrew Clark-Howard is an editor at Metanoia.