QP#2

QP#2 

Day Two of Quarantine 

I dreamed of snow. Walking on snow is an interesting intellectual exercise, requiring intense and sustained concentration. At least I found it to be the case, as a 50 year old, desperately wanting to avoid injury. The children ran and slid and skittered across with joy and abandon, whilst I trudged, dodging black ice, crunching sometimes hard, and sometimes lightly through the surface, loving every step and wishing there were an entire field of snowy white for me to walk a picture upon. 

We often saw tracks in the snow, and stopped to wonder what they were. Jack was sure he’d found bear tracks, and Wizard is certain of dinosaurs. I saw deer prints, rabbit hops and dog paws. 

We spent our last night in Canada in a Calgary Airport hotel. We were driven there by taxi. Our driver was a Sudanese Canadian. The hotel’s kitchen/restaurant was closed, due to COVID, and we were hungry. Brown Owl took Jack and Wiz out into the snowscape in search of some Mexican food we’d located and ordered via Google. I was excused from this excursion because I had given away my shoes, except for the Birkenstocks. 

It’s as well I didn’t venture out. Wizard came back, sneakers drenched, and both he and Jack were wet up to their knees. Jack claimed he had walked thigh-high through snowy drifts. Brown Owl confirmed this was the case. There was no alternative route. Snow had fallen over night. The ploughs were busy elsewhere. Crossing roads had been a risky proposition, but they did come back with food. 

I went down to the hotel lobby while they were out, in order to retrieve something from one of the suitcases. There I encountered the same taxi driver, still trying to figure out how he was going to dig out his cab to drive himself home again. 

I look out the hotel window here in Adelaide, hoping to see greenery. There are no rooftop gardens. The balconies don’t have plants. Maybe it’s just too hot. As my eyes grow more accustomed to the built-up nature of the Country outside my window, I start to notice pockets of greenery – a large gum tree, a bank of jacaranda, the trees in Rundle Mall with another year’s growth added to their stature, the tree-lined soccer grounds in the distance. 

My eyes are drawn to the geometric patterns on the taller buildings – circles, rectangles, triangles and squares. Their orderliness charms me, but I must be feeling safe and well. It isn’t too hard to dismiss and redirect the usual pull that counting has upon me (How many windows? How many storeys? Are you sure? Count them again!) 

As the day progresses, we are all drawn to the windows. We long to be outdoors in the weather, which starts off as one of those oppressive overcast summer days, with bright headache-inducing clouds that are pulled apart by late afternoon. Brown Owl starts a tally of planes. I use tiny pieces of polymer clay to decorate the crystal trees we grew upon our windowsill. We see someone’s laundry on a balcony, another person walking around on the roof of an apartment block. Signs of life. 

More care packages arrive. People are so kind. Art materials – and really good quality art materials that make my idle fingers itch – more puzzles, a couple of books, board games. Then the Dads start calling. I’m happy to hear this, because they’ve promised to buy me a new sim for my phone, which no longer works to call in or out. 

They forgot the sim and are over at Rundle Mall to find one for me. Brown Owl looks down at the sliver of Mall that we can see, spots them, calls them on her phone. Everybody waves. Hang on – I say – Let’s get the flag. We hold up our Canada Pride flag between us, pressing the rainbow up against the window, unsure whether the tinted glass will prevent our family from being able to see us, as we can see them. 

The moment of connection is electric. I want to jump up and down and scream with delight. Jack’s up like Peter Pan, standing on the window ledge, whilst Wizard squeals and waves with both his fists in the air. It’s a lovely moment. 

As we did yesterday after lunch, we’ve done another PE with Joe. If we can sustain this practice for a fortnight, Brown Owl and I will be fitter than we’ve been in an entire year. 

We’re waiting for our dinner. Jet Lag is making us adults droop, and I wonder whether the children have expended sufficient energy to sleep well tonight. 

We play a round of Cluedo (a present from the Dads). Wizard is overcome by his own cleverness and tells us everything he figures out, and Jack’s intent on not being found to be the murderer which of course he is, but doesn’t know it, until Brown Owl reveals the cards that we’d secreted in the envelope. Cluedo is a success, as Horseopoly (yesterday) was not quite. 

This time last year, playing any game with Wizard was like taking one’s life in one’s hands. He found it impossible to lose. Jack couldn’t resist provoking his brother into upset, and more than one game found itself hurled in fury across the room. We have all grown so much. As I drift into sleep, I reflect on how close we have all become. I love each of them so deeply. If we gained nothing else from our year away, this surely must trump the shitty stuff. 

Not until the boys are asleep, does Brown Owl say – ah, here’s a response. She reads it out aloud to me, catching her breath a few times in shock and dismay. Oh – now they’re really getting bitchy, she says, revealing a line about how “we were not spoken well of by some” to our Tormentor while they were here in Adelaide. The thinly veiled threat hits home. This is not the way we live, throwing cheap shots to bring one another down. We have feelings, yes, but we don’t hurt with intent. It never occurred to us to make things difficult for our Tormentor here or there. 

I jump out of bed, incensed and intent, and walk through the dark to my laptop to post the agonized missive I’d composed early in the day that Brown Owl had wanted to veto. She still didn’t want to cause trouble either here at her school, or there in our Tormentor’s world. To me, it’s clear we will never reach an amicable understanding, but how dare they? It is not fair. Our Tormentor’s boundaries are so rigid, that admitting any slight error or unkindness seems a terrifying and insurmountable prospect. Yes, I feel for our Tormentor, but I just want this to be over. I want them to stop this torment. 

By the time I wake up in the morning, Brown Owl has something to tell me. She deleted the post when I was asleep. A dull anger glows in my breast, but I want to be adult about this. None of this is Brown Owl’s fault. I go and think about it while I have a shower. A solution presents itself to me. Facebook is not the appropriate forum for me to express myself about these issues, so I decide to revive my blog. But that’s Day three.