Grateful for the life that is, grateful for the life that was.

Three weeks ago, at 7am on a Monday morning, my partner and I made the decision to not send our daughter to Kinder. She was in the swing of it and whenever a kinder day rolled around, she would almost be racing out the car door to go. Yet, I made the voluntary decision to stop her going.

At the time I felt crazy. I felt like a helicopter parent. An overly anxious mother. The corona virus had been circulating through China for a couple of months already and it was somewhere in the back of our psyche - just not front of mind.

Front of mind was kinder, naps for my younger daughter, keeping a house clean, working part time, childcare, renovating a house, coffee dates, maintaining a loving relationship, visiting family, birthday parties, future holidays, swimming lessons, yoga classes, catch up with friends.

I hadn’t written creatively for a while and I was admonishing myself for not giving the time to crafting words - a true love in my life. This was the life I had created around me. It was full.

‘I need a break’ I had cried in the middle of the night to my partner when I was overwhelmed with doing it all. ‘I need a break’ I would suddenly burst out while cooking dinner with a crying toddler grabbing at my leg, needing to be held. ‘I need a fucking break’ when once again I had forgotten water bottles, hats, wet wipes, my laptop charger. When my favourite jeans stopped fitting. When milk was spilt on the couch. All of this was my own personal lead up to the world breaking open, screeching to a halt and literally gasping for air.

One week after making the decision to not send my eldest to kinder, the world had already changed. We were urged to not send our children to school.

One week after that, schools were closed.

One week after that and here we are. Corona virus is front of mind. Our days are in shut down. We stay at home. I work from home. Everything is home delivered. Home. Home. Home.

We live underneath a flight path but the sky above us is nothing else but sky. The roads are nothing else but roads, cars are an unusual occurrence. The streets are empty. The shelves of supermarkets are empty from people trying to grab onto a sense of control - in a time where everything spirals away order.

This viral pandemic that has shut down the world in a way we have never lived through before, is in every interaction. Every conversation. Every thought. My yearning for ‘I need a break’ has changed. I won’t lie - I still need one. Perhaps more than ever. I am tired and frustrated at trying to juggle my work at home with my kids also at home. But the big picture has expanded.

I am constantly thinking of people alone, connected to ventilators. I think of vulnerable people who are now cut off from daily life. I think of our justice system about to burst from pressure. I think of what life could look like with a recession - possibly a depression - breathing down our necks.

I think of our mental health. I feel the anxiety in my body. But for my children - ages of 4 and almost 2 - their big picture is as big as ever.

Before this, I lived the life that I thought my kids wanted. Babycino’s, playgrounds, swimming lessons, play dates...and maybe they still want these. But they don’t need it all, especially all at once. It sounds ridiculous but I didn’t realise that they didn’t need all the stimulation I was giving them before our standstill.

They are overjoyed when I give up trying to work and close my laptop to play trains. Hugs have been more frequent, if only to bring myself out of my own worried thoughts and bring me into the present. At this very moment, life is slower. Card games are played. Drawings are done together. Gardening is a team effort. Books are read together with wonderment, rather than rushing through them before the coaxing of bedtime.

I’m not racing to mop, vacuum or tackle the piles of laundry, because tomorrow I will be in the same predicament, in the same location. And my creativity has returned. This piece being evident that I am driven to document this time so that my daughters can understand the reality of it.

This is history, present and future all in one essay. The worries in the background are bigger and at times they almost consume me. Is the life we had before, on hold? Will that never exist again? I have crossed over into another reality and the footing is unstable.

In this uncertain time, I am realising that perhaps the life before was not the be all and end all.

I didn’t realise that the children I had grown inside myself, wanted nothing more than to make me laugh and talk to. Why didn’t I know that?

In this new reality - this life of isolation, I am learning that life before was too much. But still, I love my job, I love the people around me and I love my family.

How do I hold this moment in my household when I know it globally it urgently needs to improve? I don’t know. But for now, I am holding sticky fingers, wiping their faces and hugging for that extra moment.

To everyone else, I am staying away. Isolating. Physically distancing. But to my children, I’m pulling them closer.

I am breathing deeper as I appreciate my breath.

I am grasping what is in my grasp.

Marita Davies is an Australian/I-Kiribati writer. A storyteller at heart, Marita explores Pacific issues including women, health, domestic violence and climate change. She is passionate about recreating the animated and insightful oral storytelling of Pacific Islanders in written form. Marita is a children’s book author and has written for frankie, The Big Issue, Lindsay Magazine and Dumbo Feather.