Pause, corona, everyday
All routines have stopped. The word ‘pause’ has been used a lot in coronavirus times, but there is a huge gap between the lyrical feeling of the word ‘pause’ and the pause in real life. It seems that someone is constantly giving out a red’STOP’ sign that feels big and even threatening. Since I’m only at home, I have no way of knowing what’s going on in the outside world unless I check the news or try to contact people online.
As usual, this spring and summer should have been more special to me and my family. This is because it is the last spring, summer, and last year to spend in Berlin, as he is about to return home this August (if there is no abnormality) after 3 years in Berlin. Among them, I loved this spring. Germany is a country that is not easy to settle in, so for the first six months or more, I lived under stress beyond imagination because of all sorts of settlement-related issues. I had to work hard to prepare to go back three months at the latest, so this spring was probably the last time I could enjoy life in Berlin.
Early this year, I was busy planning how to spend this spring. It may be an excuse, but since I lived as a living, not a traveler, if I was chasing a daily routine, there were many things I couldn’t get into during the long past hours, and there were many places I couldn’t go to, so my mind was more busy. Because of my husband who lives in Europe but follows the Korean work schedule (actually, it is tighter than that), when I first started living in Europe, my commitment to ‘to cross the continental continent’ was just the result of laughing, but this spring I wanted to enjoy all of Berlin without regrets.
Europe was happily contemplating how to spend the Easter vacation in April until February before the uproar broke out in Europe, but as March entered, it was difficult to go out, let alone travel, and stay locked up inside the house. Even when there were not so many confirmed cases in Germany, it was difficult to go around because of racial discrimination, so the body was free, but it was not the same freedom. After the decision to close schools in all regions of Germany in mid-March, the house was truly 24 hours a day, a week. Occupied almost all of the traffic lines. Like a set for filming any movie or drama, the inside of the house has become a space to receive all the daily lives. Schools, occasional eating out, going out to cinemas, coffee breaks at cafes, and even the role of a park where you run unconditionally after the sun goes down in this small house.
After three weeks of voluntary isolation and a week of school closures, the feelings that I had endured with hope, saying, “It will get better soon,” sometimes collapsed. Some of the negative news raised by some people say that the virus goes past the summer and until the end of the year. So, is my life in Berlin ending like this, and whether my child is going back to school without going to school?
I thought I couldn’t. In a home office (although rarely in the library, but anyway), three families, including my husband, face-to-face all day, in a not very spacious space, in order to live this life with no promise of when the hell will end, we had to find a way to be happy within the given conditions. .
The first is to think positively. I am grateful that my family can be healthy like this, and I decided to think this too will pass. He couldn’t do that, and he showed a positive mind even saying,‘Where did the travel expenses go?’
Second, I tried to find a room to change the house. Instead of living in an apartment surrounded by other buildings with a courtyard, we changed the only home space with a large park view in our house, where there is no feeling of being trapped. Chairs and table stools are placed so that you can drink a cup of tea while looking at the green view through the window. Sometimes just sitting there and looking at the wide lawn is how healing it is.
Third, happy memories were arranged here and there. Thanks to living in Europe, I was able to travel to countries in Europe more easily than others. When it came time to return, I was very disappointed to think of the places I couldn’t go before counting, but when I think about it, it was a time of great blessing. I put the photos I took at my travel destinations on the wall where I can see them, even though they are not properly framed. Whenever I come across pictures while moving around the house, the image of my family smiling happily makes me smile without knowing.
Fourth, I decided to consider events that could be done at home. By making the most of the balcony, which is almost essential in every European family, just eating and drinking tea as if you were dining out as if you were at a cafe seems to be breathing. Sometimes a child who likes music plays musical instruments with the piano and guitar and sings his own song, and in that case, I think,‘Yes, this is a concert venue’.
I don’t know what kind of’concepts for happiness’ will emerge as the isolation life gets longer. Everyone was the same, I wanted to see the post of’Traveling the whole family as a travel destination’ posted on the Facebook group of parents of children’s school today. We can’t change the situation, but we must be happy in this too, and to do that, we must work hard.
One day, while watching the corona-related news in Italy, it was very impressive to see a picture of an old man wearing a mask walking with a shopping cart. The news content was incredibly disturbing and even frightening that informed the increasingly cruel situation in Italy, but the old man’s cart in the photo contained flowers. The heart of the old man who bought flowers probably had hopes and expectations for happiness. I think it’s a time when it’s time to try to be happy somehow, now.