New Zealand lockdown: Everything was normal and then it wasn't

There is an added level of anxiety when you live with your stubborn 60-year-old father with underlying health problems. Add a deadly virus to the mix and your anxiety is on the verge of daily tears.

“I’ve been working hard since I was 15,” my dad tells me as he leaves to work the Wednesday morning of lockdown.

“I know Dad.” I say. “You don’t need to prove it. Just stay home.”

But for some reason my dad feels like he does need to prove it – that waking up at 4am to go to work and working a 12 hour day is a badge of honour, an announcement to the world that he’s not a lazy dole bludger that many have stereotyped and labelled Māori to be.

During level four lockdown in April my dad moped around the house desperate to find things to fix. I realised my dad’s identity is shaped by his work and although he was immensely grateful to still have a job, lockdown left him with a sense of emptiness and a new kind of loneliness he had not yet felt before.

Dad was asleep when the prime minister, Jacinda Arden, and the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, walked to the podium to make their announcement. It was 9.15 on a Tuesday night and it was a strange but surreal feeling seeing them on TV at this time.

“Kia ora koutou katoa.” When you hear these three words come from the prime minister’s mouth, you know something big is about to go down. The last time I watched Ardern and Bloomfield live on TV was during level 4 lockdown. Like the majority of New Zealanders across the country, it had become a tradition in our household to stop what we were doing and switch it over for the daily pressers. How many new cases today? How much longer are we staying in lockdown? When can restaurants open again so I can eat Pad Thai again and um, support my local business?

We were glued to her every word and every so often my dad would nod and say, “gee, she’s quite good.”

“So is he,” I would say. Bloomfield with his beautiful and perfect te reo pronunciation, and Jacinda with her clear and concise communication and the ability to magically weave together the perfect amount of sternness and compassion.

Then the PM would say “I’m happy to take questions” and dad would groan and not even 10 seconds in he would yell “Get a real job” at the journalists who were firing questions to the prime minister. He would look at me and say “Oh yeah”, slap his knee and laugh – remembering that, I too, was a journalist.

But underneath all of the laughter is the overwhelming urge to scream with anxiety, to cry because of the fear of the unknown, to crawl into the safety abide of knotted blankets and never ever come out.

Earlier on same day level the three lockdown was announced, I went to my F45 class in the morning where I sweated heavily and then proceeded to hi-five about twenty people who were also very sweaty. Three hours later I had a lunch date with a friend who I kissed and hugged. Everything was normal and then it wasn’t.

It’s not that I had forgotten about the virus but the graphs of numbers and statistics that were coming from overseas seemed impersonal. America was a far away place, Trump was like a fictional cartoon character we didn’t take seriously. So when I watched the international news, it was almost like a terrible movie, where I would think, oh that’s so sad, and then immediately think about what I was having for dinner.

Level three lockdown in Auckland seems to bring new and different types of fears. Our country was an example to the rest of the world for the way we had supposedly beaten Covid-19. For New Zealand to be put on a pedestal made our hearts swell with pride.

Ardern often ends her press conferences with the admonition to “be kind”, but that seemed to get lost in translation this time around. Within minutes of the announcement, social media had become a place of noise, a competition of who can scream the loudest, where “being kind” had resorted to name calling. Photos of shoppers lining up outside supermarkets across Auckland were uploaded for reaction and people gladly took the bait.“I’m ashamed to be a New Zealander”, someone wrote underneath the post. How quickly people can change.

On the eve of lockdown, I sat alone with a bowl of ice cream thinking about how much life can change in such a short amount of time. Somehow during transitioning to adulthood, life did that thing where I got old and roles reversed and I became the parent and my father became the child. Not in a patronising sort of way, but in the way in which I want to protect my dad at all costs and never let him outside in case something bad happened.

I think about emailing the prime minister and asking her to call my dad and tell him to stay home, or at least make an announcement that even if you are an essential worker, all Māori over 60 should stay home. But I know that won’t happen because Māori aren’t top priority even though we are most at risk when it comes to diseases and deadly viruses.

Anxiety and fear looks different on everyone and all it does is mask the feeling of hopelessness and desperation. The desperation of wanting to look after our loved ones. The desperation to be heard and not feel so alone. My anxiety looks like going into the freezer and eating another bowl of ice cream. My dad’s anxiety looks like fixing a chair in the lounge that doesn’t need to be fixed. Someone else’s anxiety looks like going to the supermarket and stocking up on groceries.

Being kind is more than putting it in your Instagram bio. It’s giving people the benefit of the doubt and understanding that behind all of the panic we are seeing and the angry essays on Facebook we are reading, is a shared human emotion of fear.

“Have a good day and be safe,” I say to my dad as he leaves to work,before finishing off the rest of the ice cream for breakfast.