Tuesday, April 7: Emails, texts, phonecalls and similar bring others into my bubble every day. Making up for the lack of real-time people. This morning there is an email from my friend Hilary, in Cambridge, with the story of her granddaughter Maggie’s 9th birthday. Hilary is in a linked bubble with her daughter Hayley, who lives nearby on a rural property with her four kids. Maggie is the youngest and she has three older brothers.
Maggie loves her friends but they can’t be with her on this lockdown birthday. Instead, her family turns on a country fair for her, with sack races, pony rides, apple-bobbing, egg-and-spoon races, sack races, busting balloons with darts, and guessing the number of sweets in a jar. Hilary makes one of her legendary sponge cakes, decorated with a maypole, and they have jellies, little cakes and cheerios. The big brothers join in the games, and Maggie says it is one of her best birthdays ever.
Hilary writes that maybe we’re all learning to appreciate more the simple things: family meals and cooking, bike rides, long walks in the Autumn sun, the phonecalls to friends, the hellos to neighbours, and the love of our friends and family. Happy birthday, Maggie.
Small things:
It’s easy to forget. This morning my neighbour Mary walks her dog up the road by my house. I rush out to say hello, instinctively move closer to talk, remember lockdown rules in time. Pull up pretty much bang on 2 metres.
A few years ago, a former customer from my husband Bill’s old pharmacy gives me an indoor plant, Streptocarpus, in his honour. I’m not very good with pot-plants so I put it outdoors in a sheltered spot. Today it rewards my optimism with a perfect posy of purple flowers.
One reply on “Day 18”
Beautiful timing with the flowering pot plant Denise. Lovely birthday story.