They're reminiscing fondly now, the lockdown survivors by Yvonne van Dongen

Yvonne van Dongen is a journalist of many years who did have a weekly newspaper column until Covid. She has been told it has been paused, not canned. Given the state of the media she is very thankful for this distinction. She lives with her son, his dog and a flatmate in an old house in Freemans Bay.

They’re reminiscing fondly now, the lockdown survivors. About the endless time, the calm, the quiet, the civility of the people passed on the street but also, how pleased they were that they didn’t miss friends, cafes, music, gatherings. Well good for them.

That wasn’t me. For me it was the best of times; it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness, it was...oh that clever Charles Dickens, he had all the best lines. Put it this way, for me lockdown was an emotional and metaphysical see saw. Time for instance. Usually so well behaved, so tickingly predictable, so reassuringly routine but not under lockdown. Under lockdown time got away on me. It became elastic, stretching to infinity, days longer than weeks, weeks longer than months and months longer than well longer than months should be, longer than waiting for your birthday when you’re four years old. Days when I thought if this goes on any longer I’ll explode from the pressure building in my head like toxic gas in a small house with all the doors shut, days when I felt suffocated by the restrictions, stifled by the limited interactions with people, gone for all money when it came to waiting in socially distant lines at the supermarket.

And then there were the other days. Days when I gazed out my door and everything looked ripe and plentiful because admit it, didn’t we have the best autumn ever? The sun flared molten gold backlighting the magnolia, illuminating the fig bearing its load of little green edible puffed purses while the liquid amber dripping leaves already looked like it was on fire. I barely noticed the grass was dry as breadcrumbs and the earth baked biscotti hard. And the birds, the birds, they sang as if they knew they had the place to themselves, what with reckless homo sapiens banished to the naughty corner. The people were at home. The people were hibernating. The people inhabited a time out of time, waiting, heart in mouth, for time to kick start again.

In these infinite stretches of time I did not make sourdough bread. I’d nailed that sucker well before lockdown and learned I didn’t ever want to eat that much bread again or think about my starter with the obsessiveness of a child feeding their tamagotchi. Nor did I learn another language, master the ukelele I’d foolishly requested as a birthday present or do daily yoga with Kassandra. Not after she insisted on a mantra and said hers would be ‘I am a money magnet.’ A friend who recommended her said ‘She’s keeping it real.’ I considered switching to yoga with Adrienne but what I needed was self-discipline with Brunhilde.

Since that wasn’t on offer I went for walks with my son and wasn’t that the best thing, next to a great autumn? You see my son is on the autistic spectrum and walking for him is like breathing. It’s a physical necessity, a life saver, a compulsion that must be executed daily. Better still, twice daily. Long rambling walks where he releases the little babbling person in his head and returns with stories about annoying people who congregate on the footpath impeding his progress, thoughtless folk who litter and the others who talk too loudly and self-importantly but equally he might also recall the nice man in the dairy who sometimes gives his dog beef jerky from a brand-new packet and the fish’n chip man who steps outside just to say hello. None of them New Zealand males he mutters. I know, I know I say consolingly. Am I not a New Zealand female?

Joining him, I learned, wasn’t about the conversation since that’s not really his thing but rather it was about seeing my city, or rather my suburb, in a whole new light. There were shortcuts, parks, boardwalks, sculptures, houses, rambling digressions I’d never allowed myself to explore, hellbent as I usually was on a destination, also, and don’t judge me now, reluctant to go out of suburb. He knew our suburb and the one next door and the one next to that like the rooms of his house, which they were in a way. His mental house.
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Given the much touted benefits of walking from every ambulatory expert, I should have returned a creative genius with low blood pressure. Alas no, but he did wear me out and afterwards I was happy to find that the capacious day had shrunk to more manageable proportions.