Chronicles of COVID-19

Title

Esther, The Midlands

Contributor

Esther

Subject

COVID-19 (Disease)

Coverage

Ireland; 2020s:

Date

20 April 2020

Language

English

Creator

Cork Folklore Project

Rights

Cork Folklore Project

Description

GENERAL PHYSICAL LOCATION RIGHT NOW

Midlands of Ireland, alongside the River Shannon, between Carrick on Shannon and Longford Town, in the countryside, along a single-track bye-road.

USUAL LOCATION

Same

Q. 1 STAGES

At first, in global terms, I thought of it as something that was happening 'elsewhere,' and that here in Ireland, we would not need to worry. I did listen to news reports on the radio and read online (Guardian and The Irish Times) that the WHO were monitoring the disease, and I began to pay more attention as the status went from 'epidemic' to 'pandemic.' By early March 2020, it became clear that my husband and I would need to take care and we voluntarily socially distanced ourselves. It was apparent, from shopping trips, that the majority of the public (shoppers) were not taking the same precautions. The care taken by supermarkets and smaller shops was inconsistent - some shops had gloves and hand sanitizer at the shop doorway, staff wore gloves and customers were allowed into the shop, but only with attention to numbers at any given time within the shop. Other shops did not show any, or at least only minimal, care and attention to themselves or their customers. It seemed to be a gradual realisation that this is 'serious'. I believe that locally (Ireland) many people are still (April 20th 2020) NOT taking the situation seriously. Returning from an essential shopping trip this morning, my husband reported heavy traffic into and out of Carrick on Shannon. We see many people walking/driving along our secluded country road that we regard as strangers, their faces/vehicles being unfamiliar to us. This, while there is a 2km restriction nationwide on personal, non-essential movement On a global scale, I feel extreme distress for countries where governments have either taken a 'laissez faire' attitude, or are in complete denial (Belarus, Brazil, North Korea, Russia...). And I despair for the reported third of Americans, specifically, who believe that their president, President Trump, is "doing a great job." I describe this narrow-lens denial-thinking as, 'choosing to see the Emperor's new clothes and, furthermore, to declare those clothes to be of the finest quality.' This is the analogy that comes to mind when I watch the daily incoherent, jumbled and distressing so-called 'White House Administration Corona Virus Briefings'. Furthermore, It is racist and inaccurate of the American president to continually refer to the virus as the 'Wuhan Virus', or 'Chinese Virus' - these terms are inaccurate, ill-informed and racist, deliberately, in my opinion, designed to create chaos and spread confusion, and to conceal inadequacies and missed opportunities by the Trump administration, to react more quickly and effectively than it has done to date, in terms of tackling the pandemic from a compassionate humanistic perspective, rather than an economic and fiscal one. In my opinion, Trump's behaviour and inaction is tantamount to terrorism.

Q. 2 EVERYDAY ROUTINE

My everyday routines haven't altered much as I mostly stay at home anyway. I do miss spontaneous trips out, that's all. My husband and I have taken to having a daily walk, after lunch, weather notwithstanding, along with our dog. This has become a daily ritual since the pandemic was declared, for sure. We observe so many small things happening along the roadside, new plants coming up, primroses flowering ... we even found a wild mallard's nest in a hedge, or at least, our dog found it. We monitored this nest for a fortnight and were heartbroken when, one lunchtime, we found the road littered with eggshells and her nest empty. We hope the mother duck survived, but her eggs didn't. We would never even have known about this nest's existence if we hadn't developed this daily walking routine, and that was/is directly due to the Covid19 pandemic and the Irish 'Stay at Home' government instructions. At the onset of lockdown, our dog displayed changes in his usual behaviour - he was clingy, he would sneak into our bedroom to sleep with us, displaying contrite body language, but unable to help himself. We indulged this behaviour for three or four nights. Then, he became territorial about the couch. At that point, we reasserted the dominant human/subservient dog hierarchy, brought back his 'going to dog kennels' plastic bed, and that is where he sleeps now. We have heard anecdotes from other pet owners that their cats and dogs, too, have been behaving differently, as if they sense their owners' unease, or 'a disturbance in the force', as my husband calls it. I'm happy that my husband is able to do the once-a-week shopping. However, that shopping trip becomes a military-style operation once he returns home. While he's in town, I deep clean the kitchen and prepare surfaces by covering them with newspaper. He places the shopping in a plastic crate as he shops. He brings this crate into the house where I proceed to sanitise all packaging with a bleach spray, using throw-away paper towels, before storing everything. Once that's completed, I sanitise the fridge door and door handles - back door, ground floor bathroom door, the van door handles; also, the steering wheel, levers and gear stick. More recently, we were utterly devastated and heartbroken to hear about the sudden death of a family friend in Donegal, 96 miles away. All we know is that it was NOT Covid19 related. We were unable to attend his Wake, as there was none, due to current Covid19 necessary HSE rules and guidelines. There was a live stream from Lakelands Crematorium, but so many mourners logged in that the live stream crashed. It felt cruel that even that small opportunity was 'denied'. I felt helpless that I couldn't perform traditional funeral rituals for our friend's family. Our children grew up together, the man who died is around my husband's age, and his wife and I are the same age. This has been, by far, the toughest personal challenge of the enforced routine that has visited my door since the necessary lockdown. Logically, I understand it, but at an emotional level it has been heart-breaking and tragic.

Q. 3 GROUPS

Along our road, we have a variety of neighbours - an Assistant Principal (secondary school) who has her entire house on lockdown; we don't even get to speak across the garden fence. We text each other instead. Then, we also have a 'little boy racer' and he and his friends have proven to be the most difficult in terms of perceived threats to our safety - they have calmed down a bit now and don't race on our road anymore, but we still see them passing by, sometimes with three and four passengers in their cars, 'their' being the 'little boy racer' and his friends, who continue to visit that house. One of our neighbours is an adult Occupational Therapist with the HSE and we are alarmed at how she doesn't take the social distancing seriously, and we have had several 'waltzing' conversations as she walks too close and we back away. It's very strange to feel that people we would otherwise have been physically close too now seem 'toxic' and us to them. One of our daughters lives in a residential suburb of Dublin. Her son, our eldest grandson, has asthma. She reports that people in their locality are not taking seriously the threats posed by Covid19. She tells me that she and her son get up at 6.30am to walk, before the footpaths 'become crowded', and they go out again 'late at night', for the same reasons. She told me that passers-by give her 'weird looks' because she and our grandson wear masks in public.

Q. 4 WAYS WE TALK

I have learned so much new vocabulary since the onset of the pandemic - 'social distancing', 'separate but together', 'stronger together', 'stay safe', 'stay well', 'stay at home' and 'cocooning' all come to mind. Also, never in my life have I had hand sanitizer in the house - it smells like TCP. And of course, I have rarely washed my hands as frequently as I do now, with the exception of times when there was someone in the household with an infectious tummy bug or chest infection. From our garden, on our daily walks, and from the sitting room window, I find myself eager to talk to passers-by, even the postman, and I wave, sometimes to complete strangers. I didn't anticipate that I'd feel the need for such conversation/s, but now it feels necessary, vital even, to have some human interaction, other than with my husband. There are lots of jokes in the form of memes and quotes, mostly online and, in the beginning (early March, it all seems so long ago...), I freely passed these around, mostly through What’s App, in a bid to entertain friends. I do that less now. The novelty seems to have worn thin. I also went into a frenzy of sending gifts to loved ones, as if it was Christmas and I might miss the post. I acknowledge this as a 'coping mechanism', my way of sending love to people whom I subconsciously wonder whether or not I'll see again. With reference to the future, our eldest grandson remarked that he hoped the Corona virus wasn't going to be, 'like WW1.' When pressed for further information, he said, 'Well, they said that would be over by Christmas, and it went on for four years.' He is eleven and a half years old, and it breaks my heart that he has such heavy existential worry. For me, the future seems uncertain. I am an adult, however, and am able to see things from a different perspective to my grandchildren, who ARE the future. If I died in the morning, I have lived a good life and been blessed with so many good friends, a husband who loves me and I count myself lucky. I haven't felt as acutely aware of my own mortality as I have since Covid19 became a pandemic. Part of that may also be the fact that I am related to two out of three people I know personally, who contracted the virus. None of them were hospitalised, but it brought the reality of the illness closer to my door than was personally comfortable.

Q. 5 COMMUNITY RESPONSE

Social distancing was already a 'thing' by March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day. The evening before, one neighbour set up a town land What’s App group for a 'Saint Patrick's Day Parade.' My husband hung green, white and gold bunting between two telegraph poles outside our house. We both dressed in green. We wore leprechaun hats and raincoats, because it was an extremely rainy day. Three households took part in the 'parade' - from the first house, the father rode his motorbike, his bare bald head striped with green, white and gold streaks. His 10-year old son rode pillion. The father was deemed to be the Grand Marshall. Next, two daughters from that household followed on their Go-Cart, dressed in the local GAA sports tee-shirts and shorts, which happen to be green and gold. The second house drove past, beeping the car-horn, their daughter crying in the passenger seat because she wanted to join the two other girls, her friends, on the Go-Cart, but wasn't allowed as she has asthma. Her mother was taking extreme but sensible precautions. I filmed it all on my mobile phone, from a sitting position on my walking aid, a Rollator. The 'parade' took all of ten minutes, but the preparation and disassembly took everyone hours, and kept us all occupied and thinking about something fun, rather than the doom and gloom of the onset of social distancing. The collective excitement was 'off the scale'.

Q. 6 THOUGHTS AND PREOCCUPATIONS

I find my mood varies from depression to euphoria. I can be laughing hysterically at a meme and, within the same hour, weeping as if I was at a funeral. My scattered thinking has settled somewhat, as I've accepted the inevitability of this lockdown being for the foreseeable future. Prior to the pandemic, and its subsequent ancillary effects on my personal life, I was in long-term psychotherapy. I worried that this would be abruptly ended. However, I have managed to continue with weekly therapy sessions by telephone, which has been/continues to be hugely beneficial to me, and vicariously, my husband. At the onset, within the first week of lockdown, I had an almost overwhelming urge to shave my head. This was out of character for me and irrational. I shared my thoughts with my husband, and told him that I could use the clippers he uses to keep his hair short. The look of horror on his face forced me to agree to 'sleep on it' before taking action. By the next day, I realised that I would regret shaving my head. Interestingly, however, my husband told me that, at that precise time, there were many other people, all across the world that have had similar ideas about shaving their heads. Some went ahead and did it, others, like me, didn't. I thought it was a fascinating collective phenomenon.

Q. 7 SIMILARITY TO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

No Response.

Q. 8 CHALLENGES AND COPING

No Response.

Q. 9 THE FUTURE

I believe this pandemic has already, and will in the future, have a profound effect on society as we have known it to date. I cannot imagine crowded pubs, restaurants and theatres in the future. Personally, I would be overly cautious about being in a crowd, even in simple terms of meeting someone for coffee, in the future. I find it intriguing that a microscopic virus has reduced an entire species, us homo sapiens, to our knees, while the planet itself is doing, and will do, quite well out of our enforced grounding - the fact that there is an approximate 90% reduction in air travel, for example, coupled with our vastly reduced vehicle travel in Ireland and globally - all of this can only do good, collectively, for the planet. For that I am actually grateful, despite the severity of global human catastrophe through illness and death, job loss, financial crises and so on. The future of capitalism, as we knew it only a few short months ago, is now in jeopardy, in my opinion. What emerges in the future, as a new world order, remains to be seen. It will, I think, very much depend on which political leanings are adopted by future leaders and governments, including Ireland, where currently, we have an acting government only. It strikes me as astonishing to think that, in February, just a few short months ago; I was delighted with the outcome of the Irish General Election, which swung hugely in favour of a more socialist, left-wing political future. All of that has been subsumed by the pandemic and hardly seems to feature in my thinking, other than occasionally nowadays.

Q. 10 IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT SPRINGS TO MIND?

I think this is a great opportunity to document how people are coping, thinking and behaving at this unprecedented time in human history. I thank the creators of this survey for their innovation and social conscience in putting together the open questions, all of which allows for wide-ranging data collection. As this pandemic is 'fluid', the virus is 'unstable' and we are not yet 'out of the woods' by any means, I think it's important to have the follow-up survey option as mentioned in the email.

Q. 11 IN A NUTSHELL

The experience of Covid19 has been profound, at a personal level, as well as at a community level. I don't miss not being able to shop - I have become quite adept at online shopping for non-essentials. I think my husband and I are lucky for the following reasons: we are used to living alone together; our children are adults; we live in the countryside; we have a large garden and a fishpond; we have a dog who amuses and entertains us; we have our own transport (we don't depend on public transport). We do not envy our three adult children, all of whom live in densely populated urban areas, two in Ireland and one in Berlin. We appreciate What’s App videos calls so much more nowadays than previously. We both desperately miss our two grandchildren. People talk online, on the radio and in telephone conversations, about what they will do first, 'when this is all over' - my first wish is to see both my grandchildren, nuzzle my nose in their hair, and make them Nutella pancakes, in that order.

age

51-69

gender

Female