Chapter 7

And so we started our life under lockdown. The rules were pretty simple for us:

* We could leave home for medical care, if we needed it

* One person a day could leave home for essential shopping within 5km. That pretty much was intended to mean groceries, and pharmacy but you could also go to any shop that let you order online and pick up without getting of your car (“click’n’collect”)

* We could leave home for exercise for up to an hour within 5km, as long as you didn’t come closer than 1.5m to anyone. In practice, for us, that meant we could go for a walk up the road, and through the local park and talk to other neighbours

* Otherwise, we were at home. People could leave for work, but none of us had any reason to do that – except, me. I had to go visit a client four times through lock down; everything else I could do remotely.

In practice, our life quickly fell into a consistent pattern.

The pool would be busy from 6am to 9am, with all of us swimming lengths, usually for about an hour. Sal would open up breakfast – cereal, coffee at about 7am, and do some housework until 9am, when breakfast would stop and then Sal would hit the pool.

For the rest of the morning, the rest of us would work or do school. Sal would go back to doing housework once she finished her swim.

Lunch would start at 12:30 – Sal would put out a salad spread for people to make their own sandwiches.

Then it would be back to work / school for the afternoon. Sal would finish up housework and go for a walk about 2:30 pm; Kat would join her sometimes. At about 4pm she’d get back, and Kat and Sal would do a yoga / stretching session in the gym. Most of the kids would join for the yoga, otherwise they would be relaxing (or, for Toni and Jael, doing laps). Then about 5pm a game of volleyball or water polo would start, while whoever was cooking would get started. They’d be feeding 10-12 people, so it was quite a bit of work.

Dinner would be at 6:30ish, and we’d typically sit together and talk for an hour or so. Then dinner clean up etc, and we’d gather in the lounge around 8pm for family time – that usually meant some game or other. We’d often play some combination of board games, computer games, or do some singing/dancing game. It could be Minecraft, Mario Kart, Among Us, geoguessr, Jackbox ... we rotated through them. This would typically break up around 9:30 or so, and then we’d have free time to read, watch youtube, or whatever. Or sex, for some of us – no hiding that (especially since Tim & Michelle and Zach & Zara didn’t have ensuites).

Lights would consistently be out and everyone sleeping by 11pm. Being busy, and getting so much exercise ... I don’t think any of us had trouble sleeping.

I would typically work solidly between 8am and 5pm, and just keep up with urgent email after hours. Occasionally, I’d have to do an evening/late night system upgrade, or get up early for phone calls with US based system vendors. Since Kat wasn’t working, she would do a little bit of further medical education in the morning, then she’d spend the rest of the day spending time with each member of the family, checking on how they were going physically and emotionally, and also talking to her extensive friend network.

On Saturdays, some people would sleep in and not swim, while others would swim for longer. The morning was spent doing maintenance work around the house and yard. Since it was winter, by the way, that typically meant wearing clothes. Everyone helped in the morning, and then the afternoon was free time – sports, games, naps, reading – though some of us had some kind of project that filled up our day. Then dinner and family time again. Usually, we had a late night on Saturday night, watching a movie or two, but that changed over time – more about that later.

Sunday morning was sleep in, and the pool would be empty. We had to ban Toni and Jael from the pool on Sunday mornings, eventually – they were getting a bit obsessed with clocking up the miles (Jael managed to hit 80km one week – averaging 3 hours a day doing laps - which prompted us to act). Late morning, we’d gather in the lounge to watch some local church online service. Afternoon was more free time, though Zach, Tim, Jim and I would typically be doing more projects outside, and the girls would be helping sometimes. Occasionally we’d order food delivery on Sunday evenings, but we abandoned that after a few weeks – we just couldn’t get food delivered that we liked and cooking once a fortnight or so wasn’t really a hardship.

Sunday evening was a little different. Unless it was bad weather, one of us would light the fire on the deck, and we’d wrap up in blankets and sit around the fire. Or else we’d all squeeze into the spa. Kat would have to sit on my lap when we did that.

On the afternoon of that first week day of full lockdown, Lem called me. I just got a voice message, a man asking me to call him back. I thought it was a business thing, didn’t recognise his voice in the message.

“Hello.”

“Hi, this is Dave from HNS returning your call.” HNS is my company (Health Networking Services).

“Hi Dave, it’s Lem. Do you know where Salome is?”

Suddenly, my full attention was on the call.

“No, I actually don’t. Why?” Sal had gone to the doctors with Kat and Zara. She was there to get STD tests. It was, therefore, quite honest. I didn’t know quite where Sal was.

“She left me in the middle of the night last week. I can’t find her, she won’t answer her phone, and no one knows where she’s gone.”

“Oh. What about Jael and Michael?”

“They’ve gone too. I’m all alone here, and worried about them.”

Yeah, sure, that was why his voice was slurred, I could hear that he’d been drinking. No surprise, really.

“Well, it would be good if I could help, but I’m not sure what I can do.”

“Sal always looked up to you. I thought she’d come to you if she was in trouble.”

“Was she in trouble, was she?”

“Well, we hadn’t been getting on that well, I guess. I mean, I didn’t think it was that bad, but whatever.”

Not that bad?!

“Well, you know why she wouldn’t come here.” Of course he did, she’d gone on about it enough.

“Yes. I would have been mad if she’d taken the kids to your home of sin.”

I’d long ago got used to this. It’s not that Christians are more prone to such massive logic errors, and replacing reality-based assessment with tribal signalling than other people. You can find this kind of stuff everywhere you look; it’s part of the human condition. That doesn’t make it less galling though. But I know that people can learn, if they put their minds to it.

For instance, Sal doesn’t think that anymore. She told me yesterday, after she commented to me how weird she found it that we were all naked while watching church online, but how she had come to understand what we were about, and that it was way more moral. Which had some irony after we had to shush all the girls when church started because some how they’d got into the subject of pubic hair care and were comparing their hair. Or lack of hair, in Zara and Michelle’s case. Zara started it because Michelle had advised her how to shave it that morning, and she was enjoying showing it off. Not that the boys missed out – Kat likes mine short, and Zach had also been trimmed up that morning.

I digress. And I had best not tell Lem about that bit.

After a pause, Lem continued, “Well, if she calls, tell her that she better come home, to be with her husband, where she belongs. And to bring the kids home too, where they can get proper discipline.”

The pause was because I was considering how to play this. I had decided.

“Lem, Sal did call me last week and she told me what was going on. Things were way worse than ‘not that bad’. You can’t have been surprised when she left.”

There was silence from the other end.

“If Sal asks me, I’ll be telling her that there’s no way she should go back unless things change. Tell me, Lem, when did you have your first drink today?”

Still silence. And then “None of your business, but I haven’t had anything to drink today.”

“Right, it sounds like it. Well, Lem, you’re at a crossroads right now. Someday, you’ll hear from Sal again, because of the kids. You can keep lying, drinking, and sleeping, and sleeping around, getting in a mess, and putting on weight and losing control of your life. And Sal and the kids will never have anything do with you again. Or you can stop all that, and say, if Sal ever talks to me again, I want her to want come back to me, and so I’m going to clean my life up. I’m going to stop drinking and I’m going to get damned fit, and I’m going to make this place the best place they could want to live in. And you’ll get right with God, and you’ll get counselling so you can work your problems out without taking them out on Sal. And then just maybe, Sal might look again at you.”

There was a long silence after that, but he didn’t hang up. Eventually he said “How did you know I’m sleeping around? Does Sal know?”

“Just an educated guess, Lem, based on how you are living. What’s Christian about all this?”

More silence, and then I realised he was crying. I didn’t know whether Sal should ever consider going back to this jerk, but he’s in his kid’s lives whatever happens, so he needs to shape up. So, I guess I’m informal counsellor now.

“How can I do all these things when I’m out of work and stuck at home?”

“Lem, it’s simple, but hard. You don’t have any expenses, and you don’t have to do anything else but get fit and get right. Buy some gym gear on the web, and walk around your house a thousand times. Do counselling by video. You have no excuses unless you want to fail.”

Now for the last part of the plan. It’s gone pretty well so far. “I don’t know if you want to succeed though. Sal told me you were hitting both Michael and Jael. That’s not a manly thing to do. That’s a coward’s choice. A drunk’s choice. And coming back from that to being accepted as their Dad again is much harder than anything else you have to do. I don’t think you have the strength to climb the mountain and get your life together again.”

“Fuck you,” and he hung up. That was pretty much what I expected. That last bit was intended to sting, and to keep stinging, long after he hung up on me. Because something had to motivate him, and Lem was a big believer in men’s strength, and men’s rights. At least, he said he was. I couldn’t think of anything I could say that would motivate him more. Or else, he’s now on a quick pathway to oblivion. I guessed I’d find out.

Kat, Sal, and Zara made it back before dinner – looked like their visit to the doctor was OK. Sal would get her results in a couple of weeks, and Zara was sorted out and was in the queue for counselling. Kat told me that what really mattered was that Zara had accepted it was necessary.

Dinner that night was our first dinner under lockdown. Not that it made much difference to us, really. We sat around and talked about our day. Jael and Michael were back at their school now that it had gone remote and didn’t seem to have missed much in the few days they weren’t there in person. No one realised that they weren’t in their old home except that Jael had told two close friends in secret, though not where they were.

Once we finished with the food, Michael spoke up.

“Uncle Dave, I was wondering, can I sleep in a tent outside the house?”

I looked at Sal. She was looking keen on the idea. Which I understood.

I looked back at Michael, wondering about that. “So, if you don’t want to sleep in the bed with your mom, we can set you up an airbed somewhere else in the house, you don’t have to go out in the cold?”

Michael nodded. “I thought about that, but then I won’t have my own space. And I know it will be cold, but that doesn’t really bother me. Anyway, I can have lots of blankets, and I’ll just walk inside straight into the pool when I wake up. Instant warm up.”

I glanced at Kat, to see what she thought. She didn’t look that thrilled. I thought about why that might be. We had the right kind of tent, and airbeds, and sleeping bags, and blankets. And I could run power out there for his phone, if necessary. But I didn’t want a tent on the lawn long term. So that was a problem.

But probably that wasn’t an issue for Kat. I thought it was most likely that she didn’t want to think that her plans had fallen through and so someone had to sleep outside. That staying in your lane thing. From my point of view, though, if he chose to sleep outside, that was his choice. But if not on the lawn, where?

Tim chimed in, “Yeah, that’d be awesome, you’d be out there with all the pets and animals. I used to do that when I was your age. Like an old-fashioned bushranger – it was such fun.”

I sighed to myself. Too late now. Michael had a bit of a hero worship thing going for Tim, as well he might. We were happy about that – Tim was an excellent role model for him to aspire to. And, Michael had brought one thing with him he really treasured – a big poster of the Victorian state cricket team, named “The Bushrangers”. Tim had certainly sealed the deal there.

And then I realised that I had the perfect spot too, though it would need some groundwork. “Tim, tomorrow, at lunch time, we’re going to put the tent up – I’ll need your help. Michael, you too. You can try it out for a few days, and if it works, he can stay out there as long as you want.” Then I looked at Kat. “That work for you, honey?”

She nodded.

Michael was beyond thrilled. I’m sure he didn’t expect it to be that easy. But it’s a great experience for a young kid that age to do something adventurous. And he’d absolutely flip when he saw where we were putting the tent tomorrow.

Then Toni chimed in, “What’s the point when we don’t have any pets?”

That started another round of discussion about pets. Yeah, kids always want pets, but you know who does all the work. Well, our family is big enough and we were not getting one. I made that clear and Kat backed me on it.