Diary of a family in quarantine #5

This week’s Coronavirus lockdown diary with the McLure family of Smiths Beach sees mum Lisa return to work one day a week as a hairdresser, while dad Tim stays at home – in a slight role reversal – to home to school their two kids, Angus, in grade four at Cowes Primary and Evie, in grade one.
For Lisa, the freedom signalled a wellness change after a few rough weeks.

“I went to work in the salon yesterday for the first time and I posted a video of myself on Facebook doing a Sound of Music twirl in the middle of the salon. It was wonderful. I worked 11 hours but felt amazing. I thought, this is what it’s like to be a man.

I woke up in the morning, went for a walk, and said goodbye to the kids and Tim and went to work before all the crazy started. At lunchtime I thought about going home, but nah. I missed the kids but thought, I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

Tim’s boss is great, allowing him to be at home with the kids while I work. The kids could have gone to school but I didn’t want them to go yet – there’s only a handful of kids there. Cowes Primary is keeping as few students there as possible.

It’s also good for Tim to get an experience of home schooling too. I’ve spoken to other dads and they enjoy it but find it challenging, the same all round. Tim said there were times he resisted cracking it.

Leanne (her boss at Elements Hair Room in Cowes) has gone above and beyond to ensure we and customers are safe – no one steps foot inside unless they’re safe to do so. She asked us if we were all ok and happy to return to work, there was no pressure. I’m glad she shut down when she did because it was a worrying time and now there’s a sense we’re coming out the other end and everyone understands better what’s required.

Aside from work, like Tim, I’ve been resisting the urge to yell and scream and by Wednesday I went to my psychologist and let it all out. She said I also need to tell the kids how I was feeling, that ‘this is making me feel angry and I’m not having a great time either’.

She doesn’t tell me what to do but lets me figure it out for myself, she mirrors me. She made me see I was doing everything for the kids and had nothing left and that I needed an hour, or half an hour, to myself. So instead of feeling like I was going bonkers and grabbing a wine, I just grabbed the dog and went for a walk.

I realise it’s about getting out of my head and into my body.

The other day the kids got ratty and feral and so I just walked up and down the hill outside the house. I must have looked like a maniac, just pacing 100 metres. I needed to be in range of the house, but the exercise did the trick. I notice other people talking about using wine as a crutch, or cutting out alcohol totally.

Some are using the word ‘fat’ like a swear word and going on green smoothies and spinach or the cayenne pepper diet. I can see the diet industry starting to circle like sharks and rub their hands together like ‘we’re going to make money out of this’. But really it’s so boring and simple – walk and eat well. I aim to walk 5km a day, but even 2km a day is 20 minutes and that adds up to 14km a week.

Your head can be a trap, ‘I feel sluggish, I feel fat, I don’t have time to exercise’, but the body is just saying ‘move me’.

There’s so many wellness clichés out there, but what has really resonated for me in the past week is to get out of my head and into my body. That’s not to say I still don’t eat chocolate cake. My neighbour bought round homemade salted caramel ice-cream this week and I had some for lunch dessert and dinner dessert, and maybe even some for breakfast dessert.

The kids have even got on board (with wellness). I fluked on to an idea where I just used a chip crinkle cutter for all these vegies and put them in the middle of the table so we could all help ourselves, and served it with meatballs and spring rolls.

It was like a share platter, so colourful and it took the pressure off making them eat what’s on their plate. So we’re now doing that every week, Wellbeing Wednesday.”