Why I feel okay about staying home in this pandemic

Like everyone in the world right now, we’re staying home, doing our part to flatten the viral curve. The kids are doing school at home, and my husband and I are both working from home. Our only outings are walks (the dog has become remarkably fit) and going to the shops (I’ve become remarkably good at keeping a kangaroo’s distance from everyone I pass.)

I like it.

Okay, maybe I didn’t enjoy the first five days. Maybe I’ve had a few grumpy periods, and a number of feeling-sorry-for-myself times, and maybe I’ve gone a little heavy on the dark chocolate, but as we’ve settled in, this staying home business has begun to feel normal.

Because when I was growing up, our family did a lot of this.

Let’s go out for a drive…to nowhere.*

We went out, of course. But it wasn’t like here. In the 1970s and 80s Pakistan didn’t have many parks we could easily visit. There was a beach, but you didn’t just pop down there for the afternoon. It was a whole-weekend or week-long event. You didn’t just run down to the shops, and certainly not if you were a girl. Girls stayed inside, or in the garden. The options for fun, entertainment and after school activities were limited in comparison to Australia. There were no dance classes and no sport clubs. In primary school I had piano lessons and went to Brownies—and that was it. In high school boarding, we did whatever sport was in season for PE, and our fortnightly (at most) outings were to the nearby small town. In our long school holidays, apart from the nightly family walk along the canals, I was confined to the conference centre compound our family lived on. (Girls stayed inside, remember?) Unless our whole family was going somewhere, my activities included: do extra study, re-read my books (no libraries), ride my bike around the compound, or bake a cake.

Ready for the boring-grown-up lecture? We had limited options. So we made our own fun.

One of the most memorable holidays our family ever had was a week in a nowhere-nothing-noplace mountain hamlet called Thandiani. It was lovely, we’d been told. With some lovely mountain views, and some lovely mountain walks. And some lovely mountain British Raj cottages to stay in.

Which was all well and good, except that it rained for the first six of the seven days we were there.

And it didn’t stop.

The cottage is even more decrepit than I remember. This was on the seventh day of the holiday. The place really was lovely… when it was dry.

The clouds and mist stopped the views. The rain put a kybosh on the walks. And the British Raj cottages might have been lovely once, but now they were tumble-down, rotting messes, that may have leaked. (Vague recollection…)

Also, there may not have been any electricity. (Vague recollection…) [Edit: Mum confirms, no power.]

Also, there may not have been any hot water. (Vague recollection…) [Edit: Mum says, no running water AT ALL, and also terrible cooking facilities, and also it was freezing cold. Thanks, Mum.]

Also, my parents were not yet expert at packing for rained-out mountain holidays, so they had brought nothing with us to do. No packs of cards, no games, not more than a single book per person. (I’m unsure of this, but I do know that on another holiday when I was 13, limited space in the vehicle meant each kid was allowed to pack a shoe-box worth of personal interest items. Tragically, my box was pinched out of the back of our car when we made a stop. Somewhere, a villager would have stoked their fire with my precious, precious copy of Pride and Prejudice, not knowing what gold lay within their hands.) [Edit: Mum told me we travelled by bus, so we had to carry everything with us, hence no space for extras.]

But I digress. The point is, we had nothing AT ALL on this holiday to do.

I have strong memories of the effect this had on my brain. I literally felt it stretch, daily and hourly, in an effort to think, problem solve and find ways to occupy myself.

Here are the things we did on that holiday:

• Created our own ball game, using a ball we made out of socks.

• Looked for anything we could purchase in the single shop in the hamlet to occupy ourselves with. Luckily, they had ballpoint pens and two notebooks. We bought them, and spent hours engaged in a drawing competition. Dad won — he didn’t really have any competition, but we were proud of his winning entry, and I remember it to this day, a sketch of a small British Raj cottage in disrepair.

• Ate curry and fresh roti for dinner every night, taking turns to patronise each of the three curry houses in the tiny village. (Another digression: you can safely eat anything that’s freshly cooked in Pakistan, but salad or fresh, cold food is a no go. Dad asked the restauranteurs to cook our salad every night, much to their amusement.)

Dinner: the best curry ever, but don’t eat the salad unless it’s cooked.

And honestly? Until the sun came out on that seventh day, that’s what we did. It wasn’t very much. But because of our limited options, each of those things became very, very memorable.

At home, right now, in this pandemic, my options and the children’s options are limited. I’m not rushing around getting someone to netball or dance. I’m not feeling pressured by requests to let them do another activity (they ask this question frequently, and there are always more activities one can do). I’m not feeling the internal pressure that comes up frequently—of making sure I do fun things, or get out more, or take advantage of things, or entertain children. Having vastly fewer options** is a familiar, peaceful relief for me as a parent, right now***.

It makes me feel like I am enough.

Like, I know how to do this.

I hope that in time, my kids might look back on this time at home in the pandemic as memorable, precisely because their options were limited. I hope they’ll have their brains stretched to problem solve, find healthy habits, get on with each other, and just ‘be’ in the space together.

*Sorry about the photo quality. I recently scanned in all my parents old slides from the 1960s-1990s. Some are in better shape than others.

**Yes, even though we have the internet.

***I’m aware that we are in a good position relatively, that not everyone is happy at home, that many people face issues I do not have to face. I’m very aware of it. But for me, right now, I’m finding this to be surprisingly helpful in my life.