Rory Fitzgerald
The sky is a deeper blue than before the pandemic. It is no longer being washed pale by so many aircraft contrails. In Cork, we are on the flightpath from London to New York, so the effect is particularly pronounced. The silence is deeper too, as there are fewer cars and trucks rumbling about. People in towns and cities are breathing noticeably cleaner air, thanks to the lack of traffic. The coronavirus pandemic has given nature a break, and instilled an eerie and sometimes beautiful calm upon the world.
In our family, there was little time to appreciate such phenomena until our stay-at-home holiday began last week. At last, we could rest for a few days – after an intense few weeks with my wife working late shifts in the hospital, while the household struggled with various illnesses, home working and the new home schooling routine.
In happier times, we had booked a lakeside cottage up the country, but the coronavirus crisis meant that this holiday would instead be spent within the confines of our own garden. Thankfully, the weather co-operated magnificently in creating our holiday illusion – at times even going overboard and giving us the impression of being away in France or Spain.
We had stocked up on treats and wine and so we began our staycation with a big family celebration to mark the beginning of our holidays. Soon, our workaday cares were forgotten. There was time to play football and hurling with the kids, to chat, and even to nap. I built a little treehouse, which the kids helped with. I showed the older kids how to saw wood and how to drill, and they quickly began making homemade wooden boats which they raced in the stream.
The sunny days saw us living almost exclusively outdoors, relishing again the sun on our faces after a long winter. The kids helped me to build a firepit in the woods. I cut logs to serve as fireside stools for the kids. They gathered sticks and soon we had a warm fire blazing. For three evenings in a row we ate outdoors, cooking baked potatoes in the hot embers, toasting sausages on long sticks and debating why food cooked outside tastes so much better. The kids bravely took to immersing themselves in the stream and then warming themselves by the heat of the fire. The older kids even camped outdoors one evening, braving the still chilly nights and marvelling at the stars.
Happy hours were also spent digging out the vegetable patch and filling pots with compost. Seeds were planted, both flowers and vegetables. Lettuce, parsley, chives and thyme all were planted by the kids. In the evenings, we grown-ups sat outdoors, long into the dusk chatting, while the kids played in the treehouse.
After a long day spent outdoors, the fresh air and exercise saw the whole family sleep contentedly. Phones and laptops were forgotten, and indeed I sometimes even forgot that we were in the midst of a global pandemic – until I would absentmindedly pick up my phone, to be startled as my newsfeed relayed some new grim tally of death.
All the time, in the background, it was Easter; the time of a new light upon the world. New shoots grew brightly from the dead wood on the forest floor. Life was carrying on in all its colour and vigour, perfectly oblivious to the fact that half the world was quarantined indoors, and gripped by fearful rumours of illness, death and economic collapse. Yet there was no sign of all this out in the garden, apart from the bluer sky.
