October 4 2021
PM Jacinda Ardern has promised a phased end to Covid-19 restrictions in Auckland. From midnight Tuesday, bubbles will be able to mix, but only outdoors and with some restrictions still in place.
OPINION:
Usually, rain on the roof makes me sleep.
Everyone says that. But where I grew up the rain was as regular as breathing and the roofs were made of corrugated iron. Rain on the roof was the sound of being safe and sound.
It rained on Sunday night. Wewere not safe. We were definitely not sound. In the seventh week, we were feral and untethered. I lay awake at 1am, 2am and 3am, thinking about how incoherent we had all become.
Nothing made sense. In the Auckland Domain, placard wavers exercised the right to ignore their fellow man, woman and newborn baby. On my community Facebook page, a woman was giving away word art. Smile-Laugh-Dream. She wrote: "The 'laugh' has been mended in the middle." I wondered when she found the energy? Probably not last Wednesday, when 45 new community cases of Covid were announced, or on Sunday, when we learned the virus was now in Hamilton East and Raglan, or yesterday, when it entered a neonatal intensive care unit.
The virus never sleeps - an Otara testing centre opens early for essential-worker Covid tests. Photo / Michael Craig
In the movies, the vulnerable sleep in safety circles. There is a campfire in the middle and a nightwatch guards the perimeter. Even so, the enemy surrounds you by stealth. You can't see Covid, but you can see when it has shopped in your suburb. Any minute, it will claw its way through my tent or buy broccoli from my local Fruit & Veg. Our fortress is so fragile.
Fifteen years ago, when I was weighing up whether to leave the South Island, I used to worry: "What if something happened? What if I could never get back?" It did not occur to me that, one day, even Hamilton would be off-limits - and that the reason for this might be the selfish, slow stupidity of people who won't roll up their sleeves and get the job done.
At 3am, I pushed my face against the digital windows of other people's lives. On Twitter, a woman had been looking for a takeaway option that could be delivered to three different suburbs in Auckland so she and her socially distanced children could share the same meal over Zoom. On Reddit, a landlord had wondered, should residential rents be increased due to the number of tenants working from home? On an international news website, it was reported "the Moon is leaving us" and for a brief second I wondered whether there was room for anyone else.
In Christchurch, post-earthquake, the city bought a large, multi-coloured, neon work by the artist Martin Creed. It read "Everything is going to be Alright." Psychologists have been called on recently to explain our pandemic state of mind. One pointed me to an American professor of clinical psychology who says we're more resilient than we think. According to George A. Bonanno, two-thirds of people who experience traumatic, life-changing events, will eventually return to their pre-event state of mental health. Auckland also has one of those large, multi-coloured, neon artworks. Ours reads: "Whatever."
Anti-lockdown protesters gather in the Auckland Domain. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
It has been seven weeks in this winter-to-spring waiting room where I went full Little House on the Suburban Prairie. The fennel I planted in August is fat. The quilt I started the first weekend is finished. There are two Christmas cakes marinating in the hall cupboard and one automatic payment to a charity has been increased because we might all be in this together but we have never experienced it equally.
Yesterday, in the city where many of us live but not so many of us are from, the mood was liminal. We were filling in time, pretending to work and watching the clock. It is a strange thing, in this small and familiar country, to wait for the Government to give us a roadmap "home" but there we were, listening for the directions back to our friends, whānau and a haircut.
The Prime Minister took the podium and outlined Auckland's three-step transition out of alert level 3. It begins at 11.59pm tonight when no more than 10 people, from no more than two households, will be allowed to socialise outdoors. Fire up the barbecue. Haircuts are still on hold, but tomorrow we eat lamb chops with our loved ones. I hope it doesn't rain.
