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‘The kids are set about a series of domestic tasks before being allowed to languish’: Mariella Frostrup says
creating a routine can help families adjust. Photograph: Alamy

Mariella Frostrup
Sun 12 Apr 2020 01.00 EDT

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The dilemma I know I should be thinking about the global crisis and what’s
happening to those less fortunate, but I can’t get beyond panicking about my own
circumstances. I’m stuck at home with four kids, two dogs, a husband whose
freelance work is in free fall and my own career is on hold. I’m stru ling to deal
with being cooped up with young children and I’m also wondering if crimes of
passion will receive more lenient sentencing as my husband and I haven’t spent
this much time together since our honeymoon! I appreciate you are as new to this most viewed in US
as the rest of us, but do you have any words of wisdom? Boy with Covid 19 did not
transmit disease to more
Mariella replies Not really! Like many of you I know I should be thinking than 170 contacts
about the bigger picture, but for us mere mortals, who aren’t aspiring to – or
ever likely to receive – canonisation, it can be a struggle to see beyond our
Live Coronavirus US live:
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own noses at the moment. Trump says he will suspend
immigration for 60 days as
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normally spends half his life circumnavigating the globe and two bored
teenagers, Coronavirus map of the US:
To find outone of whom
more, is still
read our recovering
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policy and the shock of having her
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GCSEs cancelled, for which, like the diligent little miss she is, she’d been
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hard for may
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past used
months. Her hoped-for summer of hedonism as
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when all the festivals were cancelled – although she’s the first to admit that
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even worthy of note in our current societal meltdown.
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Nevertheless, being 14 and 15 and confined to home with your parents Will Florida be lost forever
doesn’t make for a spirit of conviviality. If they are trapped in their worst to the climate crisis?
nightmare, I’m living mine as I shuffle around half dressed at lunchtime
having achieved neither work nor domestic goals. Appreciating that your
woes are of the developed-world variety doesn’t make them seem any less
onerous. This morning I got up at 7am planning to write this column and,
five hours later, at midday (having just woken my offspring), I’m finally
sitting down having baked, stripped the bed a week later than usual and
cleaned the kitchen.

Slipping into the new rhythm of lockdown

The reduction of
should, in some ways, be a respite from life’s
our lives to the
normal stresses. Yet, for most of us, there are
basics is a fast further perils of an economic, psychological and
forward into the way organisational nature to keep us awake. How best
we must live if we to navigate it is trial and error, but I’ve found a
are to save the planet few simple things extremely helpful.

The realisation that all the dramatic things we’re

exhorted to do to save ourselves and our planet have temporarily come to
pass, and that they really do seem to make a difference has lifted my spirits.
Whether it’s the smog clearing over industrial cities during the shutdown, or
the reduction of our daily lives to the simple basics, what we’re experiencing
now is a fast-forward into the way we must live in the future.

Creating a routine of sorts seems, after enormous

pushback, to have cheered all of us up, so the kids are
now woken at 11am and set about a series of domestic
tasks before being allowed to languish.
Coronavirus: the
week explained
sign up for our For my own sanity I downloaded Zoom so that I can
email newsletter continue exercise classes, chat with people and keep
Read more myself connected to the world. The avalanche of memes,
advice, news updates and chat groups mushrooming
elsewhere, I’ve found less helpful. They seem more like unnecessary flotsam
and jetsam from the frenzied world beyond, than tools for achieving the zen-
like calm required to navigate this world in crisis.

As for the biggest lessons, surely the first has to be how we need to reshape
our whole model of living if three weeks without mass consumption can turn
the global economy on its head. Identifying and endeavouring to adopt the
elements of our enforced new existence that feel better than our old habits
(which may die hard, but perish they must) is a productive focus. Personally,
it’s been the tangible interaction with friends via online platforms that I
would have scorned a month ago in favour of a short text; the coming
together with neighbours who previously we barely knew to assist the more
vulnerable in our community; the time to stop and chat (at a safe distance)
with the person you encounter on a dog walk; and the slow settling into
convivial coexistence with my husband and children after the initial friction
that have been most rewarding.

Local farm shops and other cottage

delivery enterprises doing amazing
work keeping us in provisions give
me hope for the ingenuity that will
save our species. There genuinely
seems to be a gentler, kinder and
more caring atmosphere across the
nation.

Hanging out with a friend, travelling

and eating in a restaurant will all
seem like incredible treats when the
world swings back to “normality”,
which is what they are. As for my children, at this rate they’ll be able to move
into a flat of their own this summer so enhanced are their domestic skills. So,
my advice… try to sit back and count your blessings and enjoy respite in the
eye of the storm. It won’t be long before we are unceremoniously pushed out
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of this purdah and forced to deal with the reality of a bankrupt nation.
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If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk.
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