We've all heard the expression that everything old is new again. That's fashion, that's language, that's life. We know there's a cycle. We know that sometimes skirts are pencil thin and sometimes they are puffy, that jeans can be flared or skinny. We know there's a time to buy shares and a time to buy real estate. Diet fads come and go. The world is just one big merry go around, with different incarnations of pretty much the same concept.
Until now.
Nothing old is new right now. Everything is new. And those time-honoured patterns we navigate our life around are scrambled. We are furiously looking at new patterns and best ways to manage our new world.
We are creatures who must be reborn from an apocolypse. Gone are our savings, our jobs, our hopes, our holidays, our freedom. Gone is life as we know it. I know that I want to wake up from this nightmare. But if it is, it's a nightmare that we all share.
This is the most terrifying time of my life. This is a new life littered with new expressions, the most hellish being the virus itself and its image of an insidious and invisible potential killer.
My grand daughter asked me what 'postponed' meant, when I mentioned those shows and activities we were going to enjoy this Easter holiday. It's an innocent question from an innocent child and it is certainly not a new word. But it is to her. She hasn't known things to be 'cancelled' or 'postponed' before. She hasn't before heard of self-isolation and social-distancing. But now they are part of her Year 3 language.
I learned about Captain Cook at her age, but she's learning not to touch, feel, hold hands or put them near her face. Hers is a new world with people wearing face masks and gloves. Hers is a place of home schooling and work-from-home parents who are grateful they are still able to work at all.
But out of the ashes, rise our spirits. We get messages from our neighbours asking if we need her to do a grocery run? We get check in phone calls. We get roused on by our children for going out. Everyone is pulling the oars of that same big boat we find ourselves in. And if we pull those oars together, we will find those calm seas again.