Saturday Snapshot

As I stand in our back garden, hanging the clothes on the washing line, I listen to the laughter drifting out of our family room window. My girls are rearranging furniture, spreading out exercise mats, and choosing their weights. I can hear music with an upbeat tempo. Soon everyone will be lunging, squatting, jumping and sweating. Whistles and bells will mark the minutes, and Sophie will say, “Keep going! You’re nearly there. Great work. You did it!”

I peg yesterday’s blue and white cotton print dress on the line before looking up at the deep blue sky. The sunshine pours lavishly down upon my bare summer-freckled arms. And I think: the sun keeps shining. The birds keep singing. The grass keeps growing. The world keeps revolving despite the pandemic.

As I reach up and push a peg on top of the last sock, I hear my husband Andy sliding open the laundry door.  He stands on the top step and shouts, “Would you like to go to town for coffee? We could walk around the lake while we drink it. Take a trip out for some exercise.”

So we leave the girls and their workouts behind and climb into Andy’s car.

On our way out of our village, we see red candles, poppies, wreaths and hand-written signs saying, Lest We Forget, carefully arranged at people’s letterboxes at the front of their houses. This morning, no one gathered together for an ANZAC dawn service.

There aren’t many shops open today, but McDonald’s never closes. I wait in the car while Andy goes inside to buy two regular lattes. I can see the new McDonald’s children’s playground. It’s magnificent, three stories high. It’s empty.

Andy slides our car into the last available spot in the car park at the lake, and then with our coffee in our hands, we begin our walk. We keep the required distance from bikes, a motorised skateboard, children and adults and dogs.

We finish our circuit and then I ask, ”Can we visit the church?”

We leave the lake and climb a steep grassy hill. Panting a little, I see the church ahead of us. We walk through the church garden to the grotto where there are statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and St Bernadette. I read the brass plaque attached to the grotto’s stone wall and say, “Did you know that the crucifix and statues were placed here in a midnight lantern and candlelight ceremony in 1944?”

We sit on a bench in the shade cast by a tall tree, and Andy says, “Shall we read today’s Mass readings and pray together?”

We open our phones and find a Mass app, and then we pray in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, separated only by a few metres and the unimportant church wall.

On the drive home, I say, “Thank you for taking me out for coffee. I’m glad we were able to visit the church.”

Years from now, people will ask, “What was it like living through the Covid-19 pandemic? Was it difficult? What did you do?”

And I’ll say, “We washed our hands a lot. We stayed home as much as we could. We kept apart from other people. And when things got too difficult, my love would buy me coffee and take me to the church.”

I had my love, and he had me, and we had our Love too. (We still do.)

And the sun kept shining. The birds kept singing. The grass kept growing. The world kept revolving despite the pandemic.