| Dear Custodians
In these troubling times, I’d like to share with you something personal.
Before my Nana died, she told me to “laugh, dance and love just like we did in the war”. Because when she spoke of those times, and she often did, she didn’t talk of the hardship, despair and uncertainty of tomorrow.
No, the resounding feeling that remained was one of love. People were kinder, laughed harder, lived deeper and judged less.
Our children will always remember the time when coronavirus hit the world.
The time when parents taught them at home, juggled virtual meetings with tantrums and became experts using Zoom.
The time when the heroes they idolised in movies and comics became their working parents who went out and kept the world going in hospitals, grocery stores and delivery trucks. In all of those corners of life that cannot halt. The times when some people lost everything but kept going. And going. And going.
If we can work together to help our children remember these days in ways that my Nana remembered the war, then that’s something to smile about.
Until then, pick up that phone and check on people. Cook dinner, open that bottle of wine and get your friends or relatives to virtually eat together.
Until then, pick up that pen and put it to paper. Tell this unique story as it unfolds, woven into your life and that of loved ones. Tell them how you cared for someone, or made them laugh.
And to all those working in hospitals and families suffering, “if you’re going through hell, keep going”, as Winston Churchill said. You front liners are and always will be, the rainbow over the blackness of this sky.
Yours eternally, Onoto |
