So what is different? by Fredrika van Elburg

Fredrika was born in the Netherlands and has lived in New Zealand for the last fifty years. She studied English and Philosophy at the University of Auckland, worked there as a researcher and is now retired.
 
Before Covid-19 I had been living by myself for several years. Then suddenly my one-person household became a one-person bubble.
 
As one of my neighbours remarked, ‘You have been doing this for ten years anyway.’ Implying nothing much would change for me.
 
Looking in from his outside he was right, up to a point. I would go on living alone, retired, without a car, staying home quite a lot of the time with a bad hip.
 
Experiencing it from my inside though, a lot of the less visible details would change. No visits from my daughter and grandson. No friends turning up with their contributions to a long lunch. No three-year-old from next door darting in to turn on every reading lamp in my living room before taking a small car off the bookshelf and asking where the ‘wibbly-wobbly things’ are.
 
I would still shop online for my groceries, but there would be no gentle walks to the SPCA shop to check for a new jigsaw puzzle or a present for my grandson. No visits to the local library or to the art gallery. No chamber music concerts. No impromptu meetings for coffee with a friend. And no hugs, from anybody.
 
Not that those things happened daily. I had been spending plenty of days at home, talking to no one but myself. And that was fine. I had shelves full of books, music on RNZ Concert, an online subscription to a range of international films from Poland, Japan, France, Germany, Iran. I could potter in the garden, watch the birds having their bath, listen to the tui in the top of the tall bamboo next door. Busy enough.

But as soon as I knew I would not be allowed to go to any of the places away from home, I wanted to get on a bus, go out, have coffee in the art gallery, visit the library, today, now!
Perverse, I know, but the feeling was quite real.
           
What changed?
 
I subscribed to Zoom, so I can see people’s faces and have conversations with more than a single person.  People phone more often, send texts and funny or interesting items they found online. Strangers on their walk say hello when I am outside. Every one of my neighbours has offered help if I need it. They and their children wave to me when they pass and I wave back from my sofa. They post my letters for me because I can not walk that far. I am passing my newspaper on to them after I have finished the cryptic: lots of games and puzzles for housebound children. Phone calls tend to take at least an hour, we are all making up for time alone.
 
I watch the news. International news is grim. It will be years before it is safe to travel to Europe, I expect.  I am now over 80 so it is possible I will never go there again to see my family. That thought is taking some getting used to. Never again to go for a walk in the woods around my hometown, wander about the weekly market buying cheese and salted herring, spend days with my sister, get on a train to Amsterdam, see the broad rivers in a wide landscape.
 
All of that was going to happen anyway, sometime, I know, but two months ago there was still the option.  Now, borders are closed, my world is shrinking, perhaps permanently for me.
 
So for now I laugh out loud when I see a blackbird insisting on having the birdbath to itself, no sparrows allowed in. And so much splashing that a top-up will be needed. The sparrows are happy to share their bath. Six or eight hop from the rim into the water and out again, and again. The little silver eyes are so quick it seems they barely get their feet wet, but they too come back for a second dip, for a second.
 
How lucky I am to have this small garden.
​
Auckland, May 2020.