THIS TOO SHALL PASS

Lockdown has not been a bitter pill for me to swallow. I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a home that we bought a year ago in a bad state of repair, so enough DIY to keep me entertained for months. I have a bright and contemptuous fourteen-year-old daughter to argue and laugh with, a husband who is also a creative, and like me is happier with a project than people to keep him entertained.

I started writing a novel eighteen months ago that until lockdown had been mothballed for over a year - no time to write with life. It’s my second attempt. The first novel died without a trace, partly because of how the publishing world is, but mostly if I’m honest because it wasn’t good enough. I can admit this to myself because I learned to write writing that book. For me, the doing of a thing is the teacher and this doing along with the hearty and helpful criticism of a writers group taught me more than any course could have done.

When lockdown began and the café I had opened six months previously had to close I decided to revisit what I had started. The opportunity of being able to return to my first love, the thing that keeps me sane and gives me purpose, has been a welcome silver lining to the chaos. Reading over what I had already written also highlighted an annoying thought that had been niggling away at me - I had felt relieved when lockdown happened, it felt more normal to me than normality.

What I had written over a year ago helped me to understand this feeling. The book is loosely based on my teenage years in Northern Ireland. I grew up in Portadown, County Armagh, born in seventy-seven, the background of the dirty war the theme tune of my childhood. The subject of my book, both my books actually, is the time just before the peace process in 1998. There’s something comforting in the familiar. I would be soothed to sleep as a child by the whirring of army helicopters, for me they were a lullaby. This crisis that we now face resonated at a similar tone. The increased surveillance, nightly news counts of the day’s deaths, fear of going out on the streets, but also underlying all this the strength of the human spirit when faced with a crisis. The remembering of what is actually important- enough food, friends and family, staying alive. We’ve slid down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Adulation of celebrity has been replaced with admiration for the NHS, nurses are the new Beyonce, staying safe is the new high.

What growing up in a world like this taught me is that we are a lot more resilient than we think, both as individuals and as a community. I was a part of history being made. I saw peace happen in Northern Ireland. I am now watching history be made again. I will see us rise above this, come out stronger, knowing things we didn’t know before about our capacity to not only survive but thrive. So stay safe, find joy in the little things, your ability to do so now is heightened, and as my mum always says, “this too shall pass”.

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