Journal 21 May 2020 by Fiona Kidman

Fiona writes novels and lives in a house overlooking Cook Strait. She stayed on her own during lockdown, supported by family and friends. Her sleep patterns changed and she found herself waking around 5 a.m. most mornings. The greatest pleasure was to open the curtains and watch the light dawning over the hills and sea, until she slept again. 'Normality' is still elusive.

Self isolation made perfect sense to me when news of the pandemic and its reach into New Zealand first began. My mother lived on her family's sheep station near Opotiki during the 1918 influenza outbreak. She and her siblings lived comfortably in the grand old farmhouse, untouched by the epidemic. Night after night, they heard the crying and wailing from tangi across the valley, as word spread of the deaths accumulating at the nearby pā. One world separated from another, by a dip in the landscape. And I knew very well about the famous Dr George McCall Smith who helped save the Hokianga from even worse suffering than it endured, by calling on armed constabulary to help him block the roads into the area.  His daughter. Janet Irwin, was my good friend and now she has gone, I visit her grave at Rawene as often as my journeys take me north, remembering her stories.
 
So when my son paid a lightning visit from Australia in early March, and hurriedly returned as their border closed the following day, I decided straight away that I must isolate myself. It didn't seem hard. I have a large house, a garden and a wonderful view over Cook Strait. What was there not to be brave about? This would soon pass. By the first day of the official lockdown, my chin had started to quiver. It was, in fact, my 80th birthday (it was also the 80th anniversary of Michael Joseph Savage’s death).  There was to have been a family gathering, people arriving from around the world, London, Australia and the north. I ate fried rice on my own that night. But unless I make it sound too bleak, there had been calls all day, and neighbours ringing to say they would be leaving small gifts at the gate, my daughter coming to wave from a distance, a house full of flowers delivered in the previous days; somehow by the time I went to bed that night, it felt like a birthday. My challenge was to be a brave old woman, reminding myself of my privileges.
 
That is still where I am at, though some days are harder than others. I love the bird life all around me. For three days a long-tailed cuckoo took up residence outside my kitchen window, eating ripening olives. It's a migratory bird and fairly rare. I worried that it should have left for its journey to where ever it was leaving. I try to imagine where the bird is now. Neighbours have dropped by with baking, left at the door. I think I should be doing the baking, that's what I would have done once, but now I am the old person who needs to be minded and cosseted and I'm grateful.  But I walk regularly and the way we distanced from each other in those early days of lockdown interested me, walking down the middle of empty roads so as to distance from oncoming walkers, jumping on and off the pavement, like a new dancing ritual.
 
I have had a small amount of work come my way, but contrary to expectations, I have not written very much. The focus has been on getting myself safely through each day, making lists for my ever faithful daughter when she shopped for me, making sure I ate well, kept in touch with family and friends.
 
I am finding it harder than I anticipated to return to what passes for ordinary life these days. The solitary life has become the way it is. At nights I look out to where the airport lies. I cannot remember in fifty years of living above it, nights when it didn't glow with the green lights illuminating the runways. Now they are dark, as if an arm of the sea has extended out in a new tributary, linking Cook Strait with Evans Bay, a dark river of nothing. Last night I caught a glimpse of the passing Interislander ferry, the first in months. The lights moved like a stately castle above that torrent of night. A return to the world seems just possible.