Quinces, rainbows and bloody thorns
When we walk around our neighbourhood right now, there are boxes on the nature-strip filled with apples or quinces or lemons or books and little hand-written signs saying, “Help yourself”. There are pictures of rainbows sticky-taped to windows and teddy bears perched on window ledges so that children can count them as they take exercise with their parents. (We counted 84 in a relatively short block last week!) My kids receive and deliver snail mail to their friends a few houses away. And when we pass strangers in the street, stepping wide to obey the government-directed girth, there are smiles and nods warmer than I’ve experienced before. It’s struck me that, at the end of this, we will all have a shared experience. Have you thought about that? There are very few things in this life that we can say with absolute truthfulness that we have all experienced to some extent. The pandemic will affect us all differently, of course. I know people quarantined in a hotel room in Sydney right now. Some friends are …