Lockdown Learning

Nope. Not a post about homeschooling. Or activities for kids. Despite the fact that if you follow me on Instagram you'll know I have a 'thing' for just that kind of stuff. But while I love all things crafty, and despite that fact that this alliterative title I've picked is also the name of an account I follow on the 'gram providing just the kind of kid's game inspo that I love (they're great for older kids, check them out) this post has nothing to do with that kind of learning at all.

What I'm here for today, and by 'here for' I mean, currently sitting in my post Body Attack kit debating whether to shower, eat toast or vac the house and yet doing none of because the urge to write is back, is to flesh out all the things that self-isolation, homeschooling and the terror of a pandemic seem to have brought about for me.

Because it turns out, even after forty years of living with myself, lockdown has revealed that I still have things to discover on the subject...

By design, we were not built to stay at home and to try and do all the things at the same time. To parent, to teach, to work and to try and keep on top of the snacks and laundry requirements that all the people in the same place all the time bring about. Never have I found the uphill battle of ensuring we all survived, stayed sane and got smarter, more work than I did during lockdown. And that was with taking 'work' entirely out of the equation - because as my own boss and given the lack of financial gain my business usually results in, particularly in winter which was when we hit lockdown here down under - I could just put it on hold. How those with real live bosses that paid them actual cash and expected results fared during the whole lockdown debacle I can only imagine. I assume hard drugs were involved.

I think I'm safe in speaking for a lot of us when I say that lockdown was not only a total shift in how we live, it was pretty bloody difficult too. A seismic shift in the structure of society that became a sociological experiment. One that steamrollered straight through everything to show us shit. One that none of us expected, let alone signed up for.

So what did I learn during Lockdown?

Let's be honest. In the early days of lockdown, there were no real revelations. Rather the facts that I swear & drink a lot, am a perfectionist and am the least likely person I know to be a satisfied and effective stay at home mum were simply solidified. Along with the knowledge that I have no interest or aptitude for teaching in the primary sphere.

A few weeks in I though, I started to see a little bit clearer some of the things I had perhaps missed in the busyness of life before. These were the weeks where I had it kind of sorted. Where, while there was a lot of shouting and swearing and utter disbelief that anyone with hands - as opposed to hooves - could produce handwriting so bloody terrible as my oldest child, we did have a vague routine going that worked. A routine that without the time leeches that being a mum-taxi & life-out-in-the-world involves, allowed me to find a little more headspace to just 'ponder stuff' as I went about my menial tasks... before the inevitable 'Wine O'Clock' which allowed me to survive it all...

During this time, I only spoke to a handful of people. Most of them people I knew and loved on Zoom - occasionally total strangers on my once weekly trip to the supermarket. And what I realised was, as I didn't go out for drinks and dinner or wear anything that wasn't at least 75% elastane, I'm not actually that sociable at all. I was quite happy powering through Netflix and red wine in total silence. I do not need 'people' in quite the way that I thought I did. Because, it turns out, that after four decades on earth and huge chunks of my adult life in different countries than the family and the friends that knew me when the whole concept of 'me' was still forming, the people I tend to keep close are ones with whom it's always easy to pick up with from where we left off.

I am, lockdown life has shown me, in the hugely privileged position of having a handful of great people who expect and demand nothing of me as friends. When they see or hear from me, grand. If they don't. That's OK too. Whether I'm out of phone reception on the Trans Siberian, or out of brain power from hours of teaching 'reception' (UK Prep!) I am forgiven. I only have to check in when I want, can, or need.

And while it's not quite the same with the husband because if I said nothing to him for three days he'd probably worry (& I couldn't because the recycle bin would be well full by then) he gets that sometimes, I am entirely talked and touched out after a day with two minis and I just want the quiet. His ability to give me space and silence - even though he's dying to talk to someone about things that don't involve ailments is huge - is a true blessing. In short, lockdown gave me the chance to realise how much I actually love & need, space. Not physical space, which is lucky as I live in a shoebox, but headspace.

It also made me realise that I am not, typically, all that good at taking that space. I fill up my days with gym classes and activities for the kids and ensure I have stuffed my diary with playdates and catch up drinks. And I don't actually want to. Not allllll the time anyway. So now I know that, I'll be saying 'no' a whole lot more often, safe in the knowledge that if you matter to me, that won't matter to you at all. And thanks for that by the way.

Next came the surprising and unforeseen fact that I like to exercise outside. Maybe it was memories of school hockey in minus 4C sleet or the blistering Queensland heat that sees me unable to walk round the block without doing a Wicked Witch of the West and becoming a puddle for 10 months of the year; but I was quite sure that I was a gym bunny. In the sense of attending air conditioned classes at least, if not quite as onboard with the Lorna Jane uniform and (sadly) the leisurely rest of day lunches and nails routine. However, not only do I like outdoor exercise, I'm seeing changes in my strength and fitness thanks to a total shake up of activities that has seen me working out: in the dark; barefoot on the sand; and lifting more weight than I'd have ever dreamed of trying thanks to an awesome PT that has way more belief in my strength that I ever did before (and stands by ready to catch kettle bells for me should she overestimate my abilities).

Then came Black Lives Matter which found its way not only into my Insta feed but into my heart. I had never considered myself to be racist and had always believed that I had a degree of insight and empathy into other people's struggles - whatever they might be - having had, well, lived. Having battled my own issues and demons. Having experienced prejudice and judgement myself as a young Brit seeking employment in a country not her own. A young Brit in the middle of a global financial crisis where Aussies were the only resumes to end up on the yes pile. A young Brit who was a FEMALE no less - of childbearing (thus potentially costly and resource management problematic) age. There were a lot of 'nos', and given this was over a decade ago, not a lot of hiding the fact that my gender and my nationality were my biggest issues when it came to securing gainful employment.

But, as I read and listened, I learnt that I had no real idea. I had no real way to understand the systematic racism that I grew up around by referencing something else, because it wasn't something else. It was something very specific and as a white person, I had never experienced anything like it.

Only now, am I starting to understand the enormity of what racism is. The many different faces and scenarios it is. The degree to which it has remained, to many of us who thought ourselves informed, invisible.

As the stories have been shared and I have discovered new feeds to follow, I have unwrapped one of the greatest gifts of all in lockdown. A stark reminder that I know very, very little. But, I can learn. I have re leant what the 18 year old me who was convinced she'd failed her A-Levels all those years ago knew, what I actually know is a speck of dust. There is SO MUCH out there to learn about, even in tiny slices and snippets of material. Even in spheres we think we know plenty about and in places we think we 'get' and the very words we utter.

Beyond that, I have begun to comprehend that my understanding and my empathy are not actually even the point in some cases. Those oppressed by any systems of injustice don't simply require me to see the injustice & acknowledge its shitness.. They require me to use my voice to challenge it. To speak out alongside them from my position of white privilege and to use the platforms I have as a mother and (when I go back to it) a teacher to not just see it, but to call it out and to demand better.

For the first time ever, my support of positive discrimination - a term that in the past has always sat uncomfortably with me like the equally oxymoronic compulsory voting - is absolute. Finally, my eyes have been opened to just why we need it to help us move towards real equality where there can be an absence of all and any discrimination.

Who knew that I would have found lockdown so enlightening? Certainly not I. But I really needed the room to breathe and the the time to read the news again. I devoured it. Having not watched even the weather for the last 5 years (we have one TV, it's set to 'shut the fuck up please' cartoons if required in the daytime and TV series featuring cute men with swords that I occasionally perv at while I play on my phone at night) I have reignited my desire to give a shit about the world in which I live. Kind of ironic that it took being locked out of it for that to happen.

But then, just as I was getting comfortable in my own living room, the country had the absolute audacity to open up again. With a nod towards normality allowed, I found my old friend anxiety hadn't actually really fucked off at all and I was nowhere near as zen as I thought I was becoming in my home learning bubble. Being thrust back out into that very world I'd just started to examine again and expected to deal with people who I couldn't put in time out for non-compliance and weren't genetically predisposed to love me, was hard.

I started slowly. First with the necessary walks to and from school where there were others to engage with at the school gates. From at least 1.5m of course. Then the odd outdoor picnic and park plays where I doused my children in sanitizer every 12 seconds. Swimming classes, ballet classes and martial arts that didn't actually require me personally to do much except not attend should my children show any symptoms of Covid-19.

My fears, perhaps strangely, not related at all to the spread of the virus, but rather that somehow, while I was happily home learning about the world, I'd forgotten who to be in it. It seemed bigger, scarier and more threatening before. It reminded me of arriving in the Kimberley after living back in the UK for a while. The vast open spaces and cloudless sky made me feel untethered and on edge. As if I might float away into the blueness at any moment.

So where does all this leave me today? Well, smarter about some things (and more informed about the weather). Grateful that I got to have so many hours where I picked and chose exactly what we did and the timetable was mostly my own making and the wonderful people I have out there. But still unsure about being in the world in general; which sees me actively avoiding having to do too much getting out into it just yet.

Though, what lockdown has shown me, aside from the fact that plenty of people I know are quite ok with me holding back on getting out, is that all patterns of thought and everything we think we know about ourselves and the world can be altered over and over again. So with that in mind, while I may not have emerged as an entirely enlightened social butterfly ready to start changing the world singlehandedly this time, who knows what I might yet become.

Particularly if we all end up cocooned back home when the second wave hits.