With my canary in full-throated ‘serenade the sunshine’ mode in the bay window behind my dad, who has just sat down to work for the day, I realise just how many blessings there are to discover in this crisis – and in any crisis, for that matter.
One of the blessings is that, after years and years of only ever being able to assist my dad in drips and drabs from the ridiculously busy sidelines of my workaholic life, I can now help him – as much as he will allow me to!
I’ve set my laptop up on our old dining room table on the other side of the lounge from where the MPSA HQ bustles productively along, day in and day out – and whenever we each have a quick question for each other, we simply ask – and sometimes shout, if one of us is in the kitchen making coffee! Before, if my dad needed me to help him with something, he would have to send me an email, then a follow-up one, then a reminder WhatsApp – and sometimes give up altogether, because I was just always drowning in a never-ending chaos of clients, deadlines and more deadlines.
In fact, because of the nature of my work as a digital marketing/social media freelancer, I wasn’t able to take even a weekend off, let alone a little holiday. So when I received ‘the call’ last week to say my job was suddenly obsolete because of the coronavirus, I was initially floored. (Crushed, actually.) At the time, it felt like the most terrible and unfair disaster – a nightmare for a single mom, or for anyone. But as the dust began to settle later that day, I began to realise I wasn’t alone, and I started to see the incredibly beautiful blessings emerge from it:
- After working 7 days a week, 365 days a year (even on Christmas Day!) since 2012, and typically 10 – 12 hour days, I had been granted the Big, Fat Juicy Holiday of my Dreams!
- I could finally spend oodles and oodles and more glorious oodles of time with my precious and magical daughter (the apply of Grampi’s eye!) with no Damocles-deadline hanging over our heads to cut our together-time short!
- I could finally implement all the changes I had been promising to make – and lend a content-creating hand to the MPSA machine that is Trygve Roberts!
But enough about me. How have YOU been affected by this dratted disaster? What are the beautiful things you have unearthed amidst its rubble?
It reminds me of discovering little miracle wildflowers and jewel-like succulents in the dry barren endlessness of the Tankwa Karoo…
Hoodia gordonii in flower! The blooms look like they’re cut out of pink paper and pinned with a black drawing-pin to a prickly cactus!
“Ornithoglossum undulatum — sweet common names include:ENGLISH: cockatoo snakelily, Poison Onion, Bird’s TongueAFRIKAANS: Karoo Slangkop, SlangkopThis little flower was so small and unexpected being winter and very dry (minimal rainfall area) and cold. I almost missed it hidden among the rocks – had to get really close and macro it.”
