Teamwork

I feel more fortunate than ever, in some ways.

I've been away from my home in Cardiff since March 16, the day that the shit seemed to hit the fan in the UK, and that my partner J's grandmother died, and we came to stay with J's parents in the Forest of Dean. I haven't slept in my own bed since. The night we arrived here I couldn't sleep at all, as I was thrown out of orbit by the convergence of these sudden shifts. My mind panicked, raced forward into the terrifying unknown: disintegration of society, home invasions and barbarism and violent collapse.

I had been working from home in Cardiff that morning while Jess took a friend to a hospital appointment. I wandered round our urban zone with our daughter K sleeping in a pushchair, wondering what new conditions might be about to descend on us all. 

I bumped into a friend and we went for a coffee and a snack at my local Portuguese bakery - not even a bathroom on the premises, so no handwashing, and a hundred sticky pastries on display in the open air. Unthinkable now. 

Those days feel so strange now, when we watched the illness and disruption in the approaching us from the news websites and broadcasts, massing in China, South Korea, growing in Italy. 

I arrived back at home and waited for Jess to return before I went into the office. When she came, she had the call from her father. We came straight here. 

We're banding together. My parents-in-law take K for a walk each workday, and we all have the pleasure of each other's company, the diversity of different people cooking. J's brother and his girlfriend have returned here from travelling away too.

Me and J both have our jobs for now, 'working from home', doing what we can while most things are paused. We're so lucky to have the money coming in, though we grasp for meaning and concentration, and K also grasps for our time and attention. 

We have such gifts in our proximity to the deep, wild forest and our distance from mass society. We are free to spend hours walking through a fizz of multifarious wood, baking bread, digging the vegetable plots. 

I miss my own parents and my brother. I miss our space. I miss the things we were doing and we had embarked on before the disruption. 

I'm ashamed of how easy life is for us here. I have no right to be ashamed of this freedom. 

K is evolving before our eyes, finding strength and knowledge to stride forward, to cast stones into the air and to become who she is.

I wonder how much longer we'll stay here. When will I dig my first family's garden? When will I join efforts to help my fellow citizens?