covid19

Hi everyone! This is my first blog ever, thanks to Hedgehog Publishing. I’m a working mommy to a 4 year-old boy and a furbaby, and I’m a speech and language therapist and author of The Ellanor Chronicles. By coincidence, I was recently interviewed by a Bloomberg News journalist who’s co-writing an article about how mothers in Hong Kong have been coping with the pressures caused by the coronavirus outbreak. School closures, mask shortages, working from home, social distancing – all of these have turned our lives upside down. Since the journalist seemed to like what I wrote, I thought I would include some of what I sent her in this first blog post, because, let’s face it, who hasn’t been significantly affected by the outbreak? Even my dog has been impacted and must wonder why these days he almost never gets a break from my boisterous little boy who has overtaken his territory with sprawling LEGO train tracks.

To say that it’s been a tough, surreal month is an understatement. ‘Love and War in the Time of COVID-19’ –  one day I might just write a memoir about this madness that has affected every aspect of my life. It seems that this outbreak has brought out some of the finest qualities in people, and also the most bizarre and in some cases downright terrible. This truly is the age of globalization – just look at how this virus has taken root all over the globe. Now the world understands the strange phenomenon of the hoarding contagion and would no longer laugh at Hong Kongers for being the only ones on the planet to hoard rice and toilet paper. Our family never caught that hoarding bug, but it did affect us. Instead of rice, we turned to pasta and noodles and bread. Instead of toilet paper – well, we were prepared to resort to other feasible and hygienic solutions in case our supply ran out, which ultimately didn’t, thank goodness. 

So, how are mommies coping with all this madness? I can only speak for myself, so I’ll say this: it’s all a learning curve, and nobody’s perfect so mommies shouldn’t be too hard on themselves nor on each other. It’s important to stay flexible and positive and realize that nothing lasts forever, so we shall bear with it because the sun will come out eventually. As a working mommy with a plate so full that sometimes I end up getting five hours of uninterrupted sleep if I’m lucky, I thank God that I have a good helper to help ease the workload. And in a time like this, some things come into focus a lot more – that close relationships, more than money or success, are what keeps us happy and sane throughout a crisis. So for me, it helps that my husband, my partner-in-crime, makes me laugh and lets me have a good cry on his shirt sleeve and watches juvenile Netflix rom-coms with me just so I can snuggle up with him after a harrowing day; it helps that he surprises me with goodies from Lululemon and helps out at home and spends quality time with our son and tells me that I’m beautiful and doing great, even when I feel like a total wreck. Of course, no marriage is perfect. But kids are more astute than we give them credit for – so if mommy and daddy work as a team and look happy together (most of the time), then it will keep them anchored and happy, too.

Sure, there are plenty of downsides of this COVID-19 outbreak. For one, it’s scary that it’s so infectious. I feel terrible for those who lost loved ones to the disease. I hate staying cooped up at home and not being able to see my students in the flesh. I so miss the fresh air on my face that’s not covered by a mask. I hate that my son is missing out on school and socializing with peers and friends. I miss taking him out to parks and playgrounds and Ocean Park. I hate not going out for my Personal Training sessions to keep up with my kick-boxing.

But here’s the thing – not all of it has been bad. I know I risk coming across as flakey by saying this, but as a generally optimistic person I do try to make the best out of a bad situation. I think that if we don’t try to focus on the good stuff, we’ll just all lose our sanity. So, perhaps it’s self-preservation, but it’s helped to keep me sane and relatively happy (most of the time) since all this outbreak madness started.

One upside is that because I’ve been working from home, I’ve had more time to write and finish up my third book in The Ellanor Chronicles, woo-hoo!  But I think the best upside of having to stay home so much is more quality family time. I believe that young children thrive on a schedule with plenty of time allowed for free-play. I’ve been coming up with ways to teach my 4 year-old son things that he may not get to learn at his kindergarten, and I have been pleasantly surprised by how well he has taken to these new tasks that I had previously thought might be a tad too challenging for a boy just emerging from toddlerhood. In the past month of home-schooling him, he’s learned to write his (rather long) name and little love notes to his grandparents and cousins. Over two days he learned to ride a bike without training wheels because Daddy’s had much more time with him since he’s working from home. My boy’s  learned to play the tunes of Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, and Mary Had a Little Lamb off by heart on his little blue electric keyboard.

So, despite the pressures and limitations imposed by this outbreak, as a mommy I have found great joy in watching my child still learn and thrive in this limiting environment. I feel blessed that my husband and I love each other’s company and yet know how to give each other space, so that being stuck under the same roof 24/7 hasn’t left us feeling murderous towards each other. As an author, I’m glad I’ve been able to make good use of all this time spent at home to work on my writing. It hasn’t been easy, but we make do with what we have, and sometimes we stumble across gems in the mire of muck and disorder. Because that’s life, right? Finding the beauty amidst the chaos. We must.

Kathryn Tse-Durham
Author of The Ellanor Chronicles
13th March 2020

This blog post is also posted on Kathryn’s Facebook Page. Visit here.