Well, the last couple of weeks didn’t quite go to plan! My last post was all about how nice it is to have the boys back to school, and wondering how long it would last. The answer was – not long at all, and it’s proved to me that the uncertainty of the new covid world is going to prove hard to swallow.

Fortunately, we weren’t among those in the older one’s school whose class and year group were sent home to isolate, due to a confirmed case of Covid. However, we did have to isolate as a family ourselves, following a phone call I received one Monday afternoon to invite the younger one in for the hospital procedure we’d been waiting for since November 2019. This meant a test swab for him and both parents, and three days of isolation immediately afterwards, ahead of his admission.

Homeschool was back in for the week, and the support from their teachers was great. We were able to cover things they would have been doing in class, but it did feel very strange to have them both off school with nothing ailing them!

It needed to be done, but there was plenty of disruption. The boys were fed up about having to stay at home from school, having just got back into it. I was fed up that I couldn’t work as planned during the day. Mr RLC had to reinstate his noise reduction measures for conducting meetings with two small boys in the house again. The only person who was really happy about it all was the dog.

Dealing with the sudden disruption, on this scale entirely because of Covid, got me thinking – and I believe I’ve got some way to the heart of why it’s so difficult to come to terms with the new way of the world.

As adults, we work hard to craft a life for ourselves on our terms – a home, however big or small; a job; family and friends to support us; an education for our children – and all we want to do is to live our lives according to these terms, and in control of as much of it as we can be. Then suddenly, we can’t – and however understandable the reasons for it are, it’s no longer on your terms. Leaving the house? No, sorry – you need to isolate. School? No, there’s a confirmed case and your year group needs to homeschool again. Get together with your brother, his wife and their four daughters? Nope – four plus six is too many.  I’ll stop now, before we stray into the circumstances which I find a little less easy to understand!

It’s hard – really hard. And as much as we all know how dangerous and debilitating this virus is, and how virulently it spreads, and how much we need to limit its spread, the bottom line is that it’s taking away our control. It’s going to demand a lot of flexibility, and over a very long period of time. And for those whose lives just don’t have the luxury of such flexibility, it’s going to be even harder.

Just as in lockdown, we are all in this together – and understanding that some people’s boats are less adaptable than others is going to be the key to surviving it together too, and hoping to regain our control of all our boats, in the calmer waters that must lie ahead.