Tinker, tailor, trader, TEACHER

It is the last day of 2020. The sun falls pleasantly on my back, mildly warming the mid-afternoon chill in the air. I must not forget it is still winter and spring is a few months away. And though tomorrow a new year will begin, winter will still persist…

Perhaps that is 2020’s lesson to me: to trust (and expect) the persistence and resoluteness of nature. Nature remained infallible as we witnessed one cataclysm after the other unleashed by the pandemic and pestilence (remember the locusts?).

So much has happened in the last twelve months that in many ways, it feels like one has lived right through a decade.

Two hours later, after fifteen crossword puzzles, and an hour and eighteen minutes of the Jungle Book (animation, 1967) with my daughter. We hoped she would sleep and I’d finish this blog. She didn’t.

While reviewing the past decade, I was listing the one thing that stood out for me. In 2010, for example, I spent a year in Afghanistan. In 2011, I started working for the World Bank. 2012 was remarkable only because I made my first trip to Pakistan, coincidentally on the same day that a very senior member of our family who was born in Lahore passed. 2013 just passed without event (which in hindsight is a very good thing). I met my husband in 2014 and we got married the following year.

What is remarkable about 2020 is that there are many, many memories that make this year unforgettable. Epic. Incredible. This year is not one of simple events. It is the year that marks an epoch. Personally, 2020 has turned me into the resourceful tinker, tailor, trader (not spy). Long spells of being at home with just my little family made us constantly improvise: we invented games, discovered hobbies, learnt to cook and mend. We donated and traded. Our daughter taught herself the alphabet and numbers and more recently, to write. I kept up with French language lessons that gave me a structure and friends with whom I traded stories of our lives in lockdown. Mark from Bolivia narrated how he made it to Switzerland on a humanitarian flight with four layovers, masked for over 72 hours. Olivier, the only Romansh speaking person I’ve met, spoke of loneliness as his Italian flatmates suffered chômage (unemployment). Tracey, a vivacious Nigerian mother of three kids discussed corruption in her country and her fondness for Louis Vuitton handbags.

Three hours later, after dinner, two glasses of wine, a glass of port, and one of pink champagne, streaming NPO Radio 2’s Top 2000 playing Purple Rain…

2020 has two and a half hours left to give way to its successor, worthy or otherwise and time is ticking for me to get this blog post out of the way – not that anything will be different by the time I publish… 950,000 people in the UK have already been immunised against COVID-19 as a mutant variant threatens to outpace all progress made in managing the pandemic. Yet, more and more people express skepticism when asked if they will get vaccinated. The EU (except for the Netherlands) started immunising three days ago, Switzerland two days ago. So that bit is mostly looking good for countries with resources, cold chain, and free-spirited citizens who can decide if they wish to get immunised.

But back to the tinker, trader bit…

2020 is being berated for being a bad bully. The kind of tyrannical bully that forces everyone to stay in, that snatches freedoms away and exposes all the warts and ulcers festering among us. You could never let your guard down because if you did, whoosh, a second wave came swooping down. And when you thought the tide was turning at the end of the year, whoosh, a neat little virulent mutant came along, stealing our Christmas and pooping on the New Year Party. But, maybe I got too fond of 2020 because I’m kinda suffering from Stockholm Syndrome seeing it go…

You see, 2020 made me a better person. Like the tough, strict schoolteacher who expects straight As from her top student, it pushed me to get off my lazy ass and make something of myself. Be a better parent, better daughter, better friend, better sibling. It made me focus on my health, my family, my planet. It made me realise how shallow my bucket list of “things to do/places to see to make life meaningful” was. And although I do believe I am more environmentally, socially, and politically conscious, I realised I had to do much more to make a difference and set a better example (for my daughter and her friends). So yes, 2020 was the ultimate teacher. I will look back at this year with a special fuzzy feeling for everything it did for me… but there will always be that edginess about it that will make my hair stand at end at its memory… Like every hard taskmaster, this year has prepared me for anything that may peep out in the distance, for everything that comes will be better!

Happy New Year!

With champagne wastefully spilled on the screen and keyboard. Wasn’t prepared for that!