Ilana-May COVID-19 Photo Essay

Like many, my year has not gone according to plan. At the start of January, I had my flights booked to Denmark and Korea, and I was looking at houses to rent in Cork for when I got back from my travels. I was full of big ideas of the kind of year I was about to have. I remember the day I booked my flights to Korea my mother’s boyfriend asked me if I was sure, had I seen the news? But at the time, he was talking about the first reports that had hit the Irish airways. I didn’t take him seriously, he’s a worrywart I thought, he always thinks the worst is about to happen... I suppose this time he was right. So, here’s what happened instead.
 

Image 1:
I remember I captioned this photo ‘Quarantine sunsets really be hittin’ different’. I took it near the end of March. I don’t have any photographs from before this because, well… you don’t really feel like taking pictures of the sunset when your world has just collapsed around you. This was the first time I had left my house since the start of the month. I got in my car and drove; I didn’t know where I was going or why, I just drove. And I remember when I posted this to Instagram, I tagged it with some stupid, cheesy caption because I wasn’t about to show all those people how I was actually feeling. Even if they were feeling the same.
 

Image 2:
This is the first of my many crafts. He’s a crocheted hippo; in case anyone was couldn’t tell. I had never crocheted anything in my life before, but I soon discovered that I was not the only person inclined to baking in times of stress. And so, I turned to the not yet plundered world of wool. Making him let me take my mind off other things. Helped me forget, even if just for a moment, what the world had become. He later became a birthday present for my friend’s daughter who turned two soon after the restrictions began easing up. His name is now Humph and she drags him everywhere.
 

Image 3:
I found a lot of comfort and solace in my dogs this year. Especially Spot, known as Dottie to anyone who has met her. She has been my most constant companion in the last six months. We went everywhere together, not that we could go very far. She became I reason to get out of the house every day. We live in the countryside, so it became our daily routine to walk up into the forest, far from everyone to sit, just the two of us, in silence for a little while. A luxury I know I am very lucky to have had.
 

Image 4:
Now, I present to you, my family’s wonderful creation. Before all the vegetables where planted I am afraid. This, as with the crochet and baking became a way to make my life feel as though it had meaning, as though I wasn’t just wasting away my time, waiting for the apocalypse to be over. This was our family project. There is a Chinese proverb that says something along the lines of ‘Life begins the day you start a garden’. And that’s how it felt for us. We suddenly had purpose in our lives again. Together with our dogs, the garden was our reason to stop looking at the news, take our eyes away from the growing number of cases and a political system that was failing us so miserably; to instead focus on the act of growing life, creating it.
 

Image 5:
I turned 21 this year. I turned 21 and I wasn’t able to see any of my friends or family, but birthdays aren’t usually a big thing for us. In fact, we hardly even notice them. A brief ‘Happy Birthday’ and a smile, that’s all you typically get. We are all fully grown now and none of us puts much emphasis on birthdays the way we did as children. So, I was surprised when I woke up to fine my mother in the kitchen baking. My mother rarely bakes, I should add, only on special occasions. Not only was she baking my favourite cake, but she had organised to have a zoom party with my brother and sister. And my sister, oh my sister, she had made a whole power point, with messages from my whole family, cousins, aunts, grandparent, and all my friends. Pictures she has collected all the way back to when I was a baby. To say I cried would be an understatement.
 

Image 6
When the Black Lives Matter protests started my first reaction was to cry. This wasn’t a big deal as I tend to cry pretty easily. But something about it all, about seeing all their pain and frustration and not being able to do anything to really help, made me feel so guilty. Guilty for being privileged enough to be white and educated and safe. Guilty for existing really. I quickly realised however that, 1. That is a pointless endeavour, to feel guilty for the things we cannot control, and 2. Although my heart was in the right place, my initial reaction was selfish. This was about their struggles and in my head, I made it about me. I didn’t think I was, I thought that my tears were justified because I felt bad about what had been done to African American people, but I wasn’t crying for them... I was crying for me. Of course, every bodies reaction to events like that is completely acceptable, but it’s important I think, to analyse who your initial reaction was directed at and then act accordingly.
 

Image 7:
After my original bad reaction to the ongoing protests, I tried to separate myself from the news feed so that I could think about it all more clearly. One way I do that is to draw. Something about the activity forces my mind to slow down, I can concentrate on one particular thing without contently getting distracted by the next update. This is a drawing I did of my imaginary home. It is a small cabin in the woods, nestled at the edge of a lake in the mountains, far from everything. After I was finished, I was able pick up my phone again without getting overwhelmed by the state the world was in.

Image 8:
And this, is the pride and joy of our family! Like many, I haven’t been able to see a lot of my family this year. This wonderful creature is my brother’s dog. Her name is Ruby (or Fluff as I like to call her). She is one of the litter of accidental puppies that our dog had a few years ago and is by far the family favourite. It is slightly hard to tell in this photo, but she is incredibly adorable and the sweetest dog in the world. My family isn’t the kind to give each other hugs or tell each other we love them. We don’t sit around and talk about our feelings. In fact, from the outside, it may look as though we don’t really care about each other. But when we know that one of us is struggling, this is the kind of thing we do. My brother heard that I was having a hard time so he sent me this because he knew it would make me smile. And it did.

Image 9:
And finally, we get to the one photo that could immediately be associated with this year. This is the photograph I sent to my friends after I had finished sewing my first (and last) mask. I made this at the time when everyone in Ireland was very confused as to whether they should be wearing a mask or not, because the government kept going back and forth on if they were a good idea. I had high hopes that I was going to sew everyone a mask, just so they would have it. I quickly discovered, however, that I am not very good a sewing. This one mask took me longer than I would care to say, with so much backtracking and stich ripping that I was ready to scream by the time I finished. I don’t know if you can tell but those are the eyes of someone who is one step away from breaking the sewing machine!

Image 10:
I’m not sure if this is appropriate for the collection but I wanted to end this on a lighter note. This is one of our carrots, a fact I’m sure you never would have guessed. It got displayed it our house for weeks after it was harvested and was sent immediately to the rest of the family. Maybe we have a terrible sense of humour, but this was the best thing to come out of the garden this year.

It has been a roller coaster of a year. If you had told me in January that it was going to turn out like this, I would have laughed in your face. But, if you had told me in June that I would be writing an essay for university while sitting in my new house in Cork, I probably would have thought you were crazy too. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that you really can’t ever tell how life is going to play out, but it can’t keep going downhill forever. You’ll get your up one day, you just got to hold out until it comes.