Does anyone else feel like Noah’s wife Naamah (I had to google her name as it wasn’t mentioned in my version of the Ark story)?
I imagine that after she got over being sea sick and had a break from duties required for being one of the “two by two”, she would have been petrified. What would she find when the water subsided and she had to face a world beyond the boat again?
That is how I feel from my room in my house in a beachside suburb of Sydney. For months I’ve left the house to shop to feed the family (when online delivery would take too long) and walked for exercise and sanity, only in quiet streets where I would risk being run over by a car rather than passing anyone too closely on the sidewalk. My most brave and very essential reason for leaving the house has been to get my double shot flat white at my local coffee shop, but I now visit it at the ungodly hour of 6.30 am, anything to avoid the crowds.
The world as we knew it literally shut down on my 50th birthday in March 2019. A very long planned “Under the Tuscan Sun” kind of dream girl’s trip was replaced by a hastily put together dinner at home, to mark the occasion, which has been likened to the Last Supper. For nearly 2 years I have tried to keep the dread at bay. I’ve pushed away thoughts of not being able to reach my family overseas again and spent time on daily calls with my mother there, running her life remotely online and assuaging her fears of me attending her zoom funeral.
Now Freedom Day (not to be called Freedom Day by Gladys) is looming large on the horizon and the day I’ve been waiting for is filling me with terror. Thoughts of being on a plane for hours when someone has sneezed are scary and the anticipation of the sensory overload that back to normal traffic, summer and life will bring, makes me dizzy.
I will deal with this new world like I do most things, breath, humour (often inappropriate), maybe a tear or two and carry on. That’s what we do right?
I spare a thought for others who may also be feeling like this too and I hope you find your way to normalise, equalise or whatever ‘ise’ is required to emerge from this like I imagine a butterfly does after so long cocooned in its chrysalis, changed but able to fly.
In My Head 