Unprecedented - Lara Cain Gray

‘The weeds are actually my favourite plants,’ my sister said, as we stood, arms folded over bellies, supervising muddy children, lamenting the blossoming jungle that had, in a less time- poor era, been a curated cottage garden. ‘Not the prettiest, obviously. But the ones with guts. They come back again and again. Rip them out by the roots and they’ll surprise you by reappearing. Every time. You’ve got to admire it, in a way.’

It’s a flash of a memory, floating in and out of focus, as I sit rubbing grass-imprinted knees with the dull edge of a garden fork. Here I am doing my best to crush and mangle and extract those same tenacious bursts of green. Lockdown, Week 3 – in which I find unprecedented time for gardening.

‘Unprecedented’ has been the word du jour for so many jours now it has rolled into weeks and months. The news cycle crashes us with waves of uninterpretable statistics and dehumanising medical factoids, discussed in ways now so precedented as to be devoid of interest or alarm. 2020 is the worst-year-ever, by all accounts. According to the headlines. According to exasperated friends who must cancel holidays. According to bosses who must tighten belts.

But they are wrong.

In 2019 my sister’s terminal cancer diagnosis at a terrifyingly young age came out of nowhere. Unprecedented, in our family at least, and leaving us quivering through cycles of fear, compassion, and resignation. It may not have been the world’s worst year, but it was our

worst year. Unlike my flourishing garden weeds, she did not survive the mangling and crushing of her body.

Now, inside the house my children fail to engage with virtual schooling and my phone bleeps meeting notifications from my virtual office. I scour the flower beds as I work on defining the word ‘bubble’. No longer a rainbow-hued sphere of liquid, blown across birthday parties by prancing toddlers, made into bath time mountains, caught up in sink sponges. A ‘bubble’ is a circle of permitted human contact. My bubble holds my husband and children. It holds my parents, but only at arm’s length. Does it extend to supporting a brother-in-law – now a single dad of two young girls – with his childcare needs? I weigh up the risks and benefits of driving across town, stretching my bubble to its limits for these children who have already had their fair share of ‘new normal’. I do not reach a conclusion.

I unleash my frustration on the weeds.

Soon I will gather my clippings into a tidy pile of suburban green waste, brush my soiled knees, dress respectably from the waist up, and attempt online water cooler conversation. I am one of the lucky ones: I have a job, a home, and a bubble. I also have the certainty of knowing this will not be the worst-year-ever, because that has already been. This is just a year of manipulating bubbles, taming my garden, and grieving for unprecedented moments of casual wisdom.