lAST WEEK My phone told me I made a little slideshow. It's one of them “It's good to remember!” The features you probably know well, such as the kind of wedding you did, or the kind of collated dozens of beach trips you took, scored with heart tagging music, like enough chili peppers, not pausing to consider how much computing power your phone will use to consider how a wedding will look.
However, this was “Five Years in the future!” Slideshow, a slideshow that has collected the biggest hits of my photos since March 2020. So the cheerful guitar soundtrack is a perfect day to build a sand castle or raise a glass to a happy couple, and a well documented supermarket trip that features my first experience of pandemic and first lockdown socially distant cuing and eerie rules abolished shelves, not the perfect day to build a sand castle or raise a glass to a happy couple.
My first thought was how comically offensive it was. My second was my physical rejection of the idea that this was five years ago. Since then, there have been many memorials from the five years of the first lockdown in the two weeks, many of which emphasize that it feels at the same time as if it happened last month and a century ago.
I hate to commemorate this period like a scary moment right now. It is a long, criminally underreported impact of Covid, the empty chairs at dinner table, among many of us, which reduces the suffering of those who are affecting covid every day, every day.
I find that exact time very difficult to fix. Is it a normal old trauma suppression, or is it the fact that it is impossible to separate them, as many of those days were so strangely similar? Why do you feel like you've applauded for the NHS even though you know you've done it for weeks? Was it a few months?
Turning to my full camera roll to jog my memories, the slideshow ruled out more memorable moments. The joyous thing with play, laughter and stupid faces is given a strange meaning in light of everything else going on, but we went past our TV son's laughter faces and squealed nightly dispatches from these three Downing Street Rectans. The first blockade came when the cherry blossoms outside the house became complete, short, shining flowers. My son spent many days indoors, gazing at his plump face filled with warm, creamy pink glow.
He wasn't both yet and had no memory of either of these. Imitation of how he approaches a handheight object and presses it, then rubs a Sunny Lightzer in his hand. I'm glad he can't, I'm confused that neither can't. So I will put in effort, take stock, and give my thanks. There are some good things to remember.
