The Poignancy of Covid Separations...by Sheila Claydon

 

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This is about children. They feature a lot in my romances because they feature a lot in my life in the form of grandchildren and their friends. Animals also feature ditto. Authors are always told to write about the things they know, so I do...at least to some extent. And certainly as far as children are concerned. 

All of my granddaughters love books and all of them enjoy writing stories and poems, many of which give the family pleasure as they note the progress being made and the imagination being shared. Just occasionally, however, things become a little more poignant, none more than this letter from my 6 year old granddaughter who lives in Hong Kong. She and her parents were due to spend 6 weeks with us in the summer of 2020 but Covid put paid to that as they weren't allowed to leave Hong Kong. So now we continue, as we always have, to talk on Skype and to share thoughts on a WhatsApp Family Chat. This includes everyone in the immediate UK family. 

Due to the time difference we often wake up in the morning to messages and photos that have been sent while we were asleep and this is what arrived last week. 

Given that we are way past Christmas we are taking the greeting as it is intended. We also love the idiosyncratic spellings, the pink pen and the various stickers. The message, sent without any prompting from her parents, is heartrending though. In our UK family we have dogs, cats and a horse, some of which she has already met, and all of whom she has seen on Skype. A Hong Kong high-rise is not the place for pets, however, so she is living for the day when she can play with them all and ride the horse on a leading rein, as she was expecting to do last summer.

Having said that she is managing pretty well on Skype in the interim. She's been known to send her eldest cousin messages during a university lecture and call us up while we are out walking the dog and take the walk through the fields with us. We also manage to play games like UNO or Chess online after a fashion, read books or write stories, and, if they are with her, be introduced to many of her little friends.  It's amazing what can be achieved with technology and we consider ourselves very lucky to be able to maintain such a close relationship across the miles. It doesn't make up for that poignant little letter though. Nothing will.

On a lighter note, the middle granddaughter is known for her sense of humour and dry wit. These came into play this week when, to her disgust, she was told that because it was International Book Day she had to dress up as a character from a book she liked. At 14, she thought the whole thing was ridiculous in  the way only a teenager can, especially as lessons were still online! She is, however, a very dutiful student, so when the day came she chose Harry Potter as her character. She then mentally donned his invisibility cloak by keeping her camera turned off during her online English lesson. I don't know what costumes her classmates came up with but what I do know is that she won first prize. Obviously her English teacher has a sense of humour too. It has kept the whole family laughing all week. 

Now she is back in the classroom and so is our granddaughter in Hong Kong, and hopefully it won't be too long before we can all meet up again. In the meantime I have another book to write...children will feature!!