Please, come in. Take a seat and make yourself comfortable.
Whilst coronavirus boards everyone up in their homes we’ve all had to spend time reflecting and interacting in different ways.
I’ve been fortunate enough to isolate with my family: a group of my biggest confidants and supporters, and, at times, annoyers. Living in a family of four, my younger brother, parents and I have always gotten on pretty well. We have occasional outbursts of anger or frustration, but they generally comes from a feeling of suffocation from the love and care we’re receiving.
We live in a humble little house — the home that my parents bought some 30 years ago — so our living quarters have always been relatively intimate, interaction inescapable. Much like the inability to avoid contact, skirting around topics of conversation that may be taboo or just a little T.M.I was not common in our home. Growing up, I always thought it was just the done thing, until I spoke to my friends who were horrified to hear that the ‘birds and the bees’ conversation hadn’t been just one awkward parent-child conversation to be ticked off on the responsible parent inventory, but many little chats—some even shared by all of us across the dinner table.
When I grew into an angsty teen, I became annoyed and frustrated at my parents interrogation-style questions that were always well-meaning—‘How was work?’, ‘How was uni?’, ‘How was that party?’, ‘Were there any cute boys there?’, ‘Did you eat yet?’.
After particularly long days I would make a beeline to my room, giving monosyllabic answers before I closed my door for a few moments of uninterrupted silence. I would inevitably hear Mum’s footsteps coming up the hall, followed by a few gentle knocks and a hesitant opening of my door. What would follow was the classic lean-on-the-doorframe-because-I-don’t-want-to-disturb-you manoeuvre, which gradually saw her perched at the foot of my bed, then more comfortably on the side closest to me. Sometimes, if the conversation was very lengthy, she would stretch out and lay down on propped elbows, chin in hands, like a child listening to tales from their hero.
As work, uni, and life in general sped up, and I was seemingly standing still, my patience grew short and long conversations with my folks were becoming few and far between. When we first went into isolation, our family had its teething problems, as was to be expected. My brother and I had gone from independent young adults—out with friends, studying, working—to having any and all freedoms taken away from us, constantly under the loving gaze of our parents.
But the novelty of first lockdown meant that we all reconnected. My brother and I, who have always been incredibly close, but had failed to have many deep interactions due to our growing independence from the family unit, were able to rekindle that sibling bond that we’d always cherished so much. We all played board games (although no amount of family bonding will ever be enough to make Monopoly a safe game to play), we went for walks, and we wouldn’t run away from the dinner table as soon as we were finished, instead we’d do the weekly newspaper trivia.
Then, things began to open up and return to ‘normal’. My brother was always out with friends, I was at work, or seeing my boyfriend, and very little of the habits that we had grown newly accustomed to remained.
When second lockdown was announced, there was a large grey cloud over Melbourne. The dire living situations of many were becoming more apparent, with worrying statistics emerging from hard public housing lockdowns, domestic violence victims, and individuals living alone. It became clear that things could be worse.
The frustrations that I experienced with my family in the first lockdown seemed to have largely dissipated, and we all found ourselves in a groove that worked. The doors to everyone’s rooms went from being closed, to slightly ajar, then completely open. I noticed I’d picked up my Mum’s habit of leaning on the doorframe to gauge whether I should come in, slowly entering the room in increasing degrees of comfort and leisure. We’ve all opened up to each other more, with conversations that start with ‘How are you?’ eliciting a more detailed response than ‘fine’, because we know what is meant, and we have the time to talk it out. We tag-team to go for walks with each other, and use these as mini therapy sessions—discussing whatever is on our minds (usually a stressful assignment that needs some talking out).
Instead of saying ‘close your door on the way out’, I find myself saying ‘leave the door open’, in case someone walks past and they, or I, want to have a chat. Bedrooms have become the modern day conversation pit of the 70s, with family members sprawled on every surface; one on a chair, one on the bed, one on the floor. All these little things that would have made me clench my teeth in the pre-Covid rat race, are now all the things I look forward to the most.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to share this time with my family; I know many whose experiences in lockdown have been a true test of mental and physical endurance. So perhaps going forward, you should leave your door slightly ajar too—you never know who might need a sympathetic shoulder, or doorframe, to lean on.
Hannah Kammerhofer is currently studying a Masters of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing. With a BA in psychology and history, believed to be the world's most useless degree, Hannah has found ways to integrate it into her everyday life; she is always in her head and living in the past.