Helene Connor is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland. Helene is of Māori, English and Irish descent.  She has whakapapa (genealogy) links to Te Atiawa and Ngati Ruanui iwi (tribes) and Ngati Rahiri and Ngati Te Whiti hapu (sub-tribes). Helene’s research is located within an interdisciplinary platform which includes gender studies, ethnicity, cultural representation and narrative and biographical research.   Website: https://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/people/dcon006
 
On 17 August 2021 the first case of the COVID-19 Delta variant was detected in an Auckland man and all of Aotearoa New Zealand was plunged into a three day level 4 lockdown.  Auckland has remained in Lockdown ever since and at Day 104 (or there abouts) after months of zooming,  I’m all zoomed out!
Zoom is an enabler.  It’s enabled work from home in a zoom bubble.  A zoom bubble that has provided a safe space to continue to work; protected and isolated.  Zoom has filtered much of the outside world out of range, just as the face masks we now wear to the supermarket filter out those nasty Delta droplets and particles.

Yet, while zoom has enabled work to continue and to “stay calm and carry on”, it’s  taken a toll on my  mental and physical health.  I’m in the throes of zoom fatigue and zoom burnout. My work calendar has all my scheduled zui (zoom meetings). webinars and zoom catch-ups.    It has the zoom teaching times and the zoom supervision times.  It even has the zoom social times where friends get to meet up in zoom land and have some zoom fun trying out  zoom  filters  and experimenting with virtual backgrounds  wearing zoom bunny ears, silly hats and zoom created virtual masks.

Zoom is both a blessing and a curse.  With all its benefits, it has a range  of adverse consequences.  Most of my colleagues are reporting diminished eye sight from the long hours of screen time. Hours of sitting in front of a monitor have resulted in  neck and back pain and RSI is quite common.  But perhaps the most insidious consequence of all is anxiety, the fear of leaving the comfort of the zoom bubble.  The fear of going out and mingling with the masses who may or may not be double vaccinated.   The obsessive compulsive need to sanitise hands every time you touch an object outside of your zoom bubble.  The tense moment, a stranger sniffles or coughs.   The constant signing in with the NZ Covid Tracer every time you pop down to the dairy or the local cafe’  and then worrying about getting the dreaded notification – “you have been in contact with someone who has covid-19”! 
 
For now though, we have another layer of protection, the ‘My Vaccine Pass’.  And soon, we are moving into the Traffic Light System and after a time, those of us who have been living in our zoom bubbles will begin to emerge into the stream of life again.   We will be zoom-free.  We can  recharge those internal  zoom batteries and simply ‘be’!    

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​Paddy Richardson is the author of two collections of short stories and seven novels. She has been awarded four Creative New Zealand Awards, the University of Otago Burns Fellowship, the Beatson Fellowship, the James Wallace Arts Trust Residency Award and the Randell House Residency. Paddy is a mentor and assessor for NZSA. Her latest novel, 'By the Green of the Spring’, will be published early next year.
 
I am picking up my grandson, Oli, from his drumming lessons. While I wait, I listen to National Radio. Today, there has been one covid community case found in Auckland. On the drive home I tell Oli and he tells me how Covid attacks the body, how anti-bodies ‘go nuts’ trying to fight it and how they end up destroying the body they’re trying to protect. We talk about vaccination, about anti-vaxers. We talk about the right to choose but how personal choice might affect other people. He’s a twelve-year-old boy, immensely interesting, in his knowledge and humour and ideas. We talk idly. One case in Auckland doesn’t seem all that significant.
 
But it is. There’s a press conference. Jacinda’s steady, confident voice contrasts markedly with the visible concern on her face.  It looks as if Delta has made it to New Zealand.
 
And here we go again. Lockdown. The one o’clock conferences, where we watch as the numbers climb and now, dammit, it’s spread to Wellington. The analysis. The clamouring questions from the gathered media. Do they really want answers or are they merely trying to make a point? Never mind. Everyone’s excitable. Everyone’s stressed. It’s a bit of light relief when somebody asks Jacinda about the safety concerns relating to sexual intercourse during hospital visits.
 
As for me, I’ve not long returned from clearing out my mother’s house in Nelson after her recent death. I was looking forward to coming home, being with my own family again, catching up with friends. I thought, maybe, I’ll get some writing done over lockdown. Instead, I find myself languishing on a sofa like a Victorian invalid.
 
Clearing out Mum’s house was physically challenging, the emotional journey harder still. Tucked away in her drawers were her swimsuits. Until the last year of her life, Mum swam every day from Spring to late Autumn in the sea at the bottom of the street. We both loved swimming, both loved the sea. '
 
It was the china, crystal, embroidered linen, silver, the ornaments, that I found hardest.
So many precious possessions which had accompanied her from Northland to Christchurch to Nelson to Dunedin. And back her treasures came again to Nelson, when she and Dad moved into their house - (brand new!)- to reside, finally, in the glass-fronted cabinets. The pretty tea-sets, the pieces of Wedgewood, the embroidered table and tray-cloths I could remember Mum working on at night. Listening to serials on the radio in our house in Christchurch, the hoop with the fine linen stretched across it as Mum created tiny flowers from bright-coloured silks. I found her wedding dress, exquisitely hand-stitched.  In her wedding photos, Mum is beautiful, radiantly smiling.
 
Mother-daughter relationships, though basically loving, can be tumultuous, frustrating, distressing; there is the urge to both connect and to pull free. As I drove away from Mum’s house in Nelson and began the long journey to Dunedin, I felt overwhelmed with sadness, anger as well. Was it her or was it me? We so rarely understood each other. So often, we disappointed each other. And now, now, I ’d given away so many of her precious things.
 
But it was the good things Mum’s precious belongings, those which signified our closeness I chose.  In level three, the boxes arrived. My Nana’s beautiful Royal Doulton bowl, the pretty cup, saucer and plate set I bought Mum for Mother’s Day from Woolworths for two shillings and sixpence, the tea-set made from frail, see-through china Mum and Dad were given as a wedding present, the small crystal glasses they brought back from London after their long- awaited overseas trip to Europe. The tall, multi-coloured glasses they bought in the ‘sixties when they discovered Pimms was a much nicer evening drink than sherry. Ah, such sophistication. 
 
And Nana’s bowl. From Devon, to Tangowahine, to Christchurch, to Nelson, to Dunedin. And to Nelson again. In every house it was placed on a table in the hallway. Always filled with flowers.  My mother loved flowers. And now it’s here with me in Broad Bay, Dunedin.  Vibrantly coloured in deep blues, greens and gold, it has survived and witnessed much. I have it beside the window in my living room, facing the sea. I’ve filled it with orchids.

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​Annabel Schuler has been a journalist for many decades. Now a writer she is based in Nelson where she is working on a biography and plumbing the depths of book publishing for the first time.

One concept we heard a lot during the Covid 19 lockdown in March 2020 was ‘juggling’.  This perfectly described my daughter who was juggling a work-from-home job, two lovely children with completely different learning styles, and a household where her husband is an essential worker.

Living 550 km away I felt for her and wracked my brains for a way to help. The only skills I could offer from a distance were those of a writer, sometimes tutor.  So, I made my trickiest pitch yet.

I suggested both children write a story with me then I would have the stories professionally published as a souvenir.  The trick was to find topics which interested and engaged them.   Miss 7 years old is bright and breezy, everything is effortless, but she knows what she wants to do and what not.  Mr 10 years old is a different lad.  He would rather be grounded from mountain biking for a month than do school work - especially writing. But I made the pitch, it was accepted, and I began the stories by writing the first few sentences.

We batted the stories back and forth by email with the children keeping the plot flowing through some rather incredible twists and turns. I added context and structure and there was some judicious editing.
But I needed to be careful.  These were the children’s stories not mine and to keep the contributions coming the stories had to feed their motivation.  Mr 10’s emerged, as predicted, as a ‘naughty’ story about injuries due to, yes mountain biking, and disobeying instructions from mum and dad.  It all ended with a minor accident in grandad’s truck.  Miss 7 was all about horse riding. Her story revolved around her passion and her friends. There were ponies named Rollo and Casper who offered endless rides.

The local printers did a great job and we have several smart looking A5 booklets to remind them of being locked down - but not out.

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​Sue is a poet, avid conservationist and a member of the Waiheke Volunteer Fire Brigade and has felt fortunate to live on an island with no Covid-19 cases.  Her friend’s, sister’s daughter endured Covid in quarantine, however, when she returned to Aotearoa.  Her ‘long-covid’ heart damage story touched Sue, particularly as she experienced a post-viral condition during the 1980s that deeply affected her life. Sue worries hugely about the, almost, invisible multitudes that will suffer ‘long-covid’ in the years ahead.
 
Your daughter’s heart
 
The Onetangi wave breathes   rises    breaks on the shore
then is gone as if it has never been there
 
we hear our heartbeats in
the breaking surf
 
seawater seeps into the sand
& the sand dries again
 
what wave it seems to ask
what wave?
 
I dream of a time we can say
what pandemic?
It’s gone as if it has never been here.
 
Yet we drink our tea & you
talk about
your daughter’s heart
 
how you both escape
Europe by the skin of your teeth
Covid hitchhiking
in your daughter’s body
like some demon.
 
The possession is a stone
on her chest over the heart
digging into that muscle
 
leaving its mark
the scar
a weakness.
 
You & I sip our knowledge
quietly
 
we’ll turn & turn in
Waikouaiti & Waiheke
listen to the sea breathe
out on our shoreline
while the pandemic’s ghost
stamps cloven hooves
shadows us.
 
© sue fitchett

​Abby Letteri is a writer based in Wellington and on the Kapiti Coast. Her first book, down they forgot: a memoir, was published in early 2021, between lockdowns.
 
During the first lockdown, I walked my dogs up the road most days to stretch their legs and clear away the cobwebs. We’d take a left out of the gate and follow the trees until the canopy gave way to sky, to where the road dips down to a one lane bridge, then up again into the narrowing of the Gorge. Just before we’d break free of the trees, we’d pass an old farm gate made of wood and covered with delicate mosses, set into the bush. It was one of those quiet gates that holds its tongue and tells no secrets.
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During the second week of lockdown, a basket appeared on a chunk of wood just outside the quiet gate. It was old, formed of two-toned wicker, brown and cream, with a braided handle, and filled to the brim with apples and walnuts. A hand-lettered sign told me to please help myself.
The apples were small but amazingly sweet and juicy. I ate one as I walked up the road and pocketed another for the old pony. This ritual became the new routine. I pocketed the occasional walnut, too, delighting in cracking it open after dinner and eating the sweet meats with a bit of cheese. There was something about the basket, the unencumbered offering, that made me feel more at home than I had in years.

On the fifth day, I left an offering in return: a perfect crimson leaf from my little maple tree. Another day, a small beach pebble in the shape of a heart. I placed these treasures in the bottom of the basket and felt a quickening of connection.

Towards the end of the second week of lockdown, the basket was gone. In its place was a note asking whoever had taken it to please return the basket. It wasn’t an angry note, it seemed to accept the possibility that the contents might have made a difference to a hungry household. But something about the theft got my hackles up. All the way to the swing bridge and back, past the reserve and the lone white horse in the big field, I kept turning it over in my mind. Someone had pulled over, snatched up the basket—and with it the day’s harvest of apples and walnuts—and taken off. Casual and callous, just like that.

The following morning, while rummaging in the shed, I spied a cheap woven basket festooned with thick cobwebs and surrounded by mouse droppings, its trim painted pale pink. I dusted it off, gave it a blast with the hose and set it outside in the sun to air. By the time the dogs and I were ready to walk, the basket was dry. I scribbled a note on a piece of card, and we headed up the road.
When we got to the quiet gate, the stump was still empty. I put the card on the stump and placed the pink basket on top. It was a poor substitute for the beautiful old brown hamper, but perhaps it would be a vessel good-enough for the harvest.

Up the Gorge, the white horse was grazing by the fence and whickered a soft greeting as we passed. I stopped to pluck him a handful of the long grass growing on the verge. By the swing bridge, we were overtaken by a mob of sheep followed by the farmer with his grinning dogs riding shotgun on a quad bike. Hens were out in the grassy paddock, scratching under trees, and the donkeys, Alice and Victor, lifted their heads and followed us with their intelligent eyes. A kingfisher, plump in his blue-green cloak and rosy waistcoat, perched on the quiet gate.

The animals reminded me how often I get it wrong with people, how much easier it is to communicate through an indirect exchange of apples and pebbles. Lockdown has its consolations. Heading home, I felt an indescribable lightness. It may have been joy.