Lockdown’s as bad as Boxing Day with the family

LIVING through these times heightens the gulf between how we imagine things to be and how they actually are. And right up there on the front line is the matter of family relations.

Theoretically, we should all take consolation from being together. We think that contact with our nearest and dearest is reassuring and that we feel safer if they are close to us. We consider the family a supportive and caring unit that will help us get through all of this. I don’t know about everyone else but I’m not seeing it exactly like that. Families are already driving each other crazy with all this unusual togetherness.

As members of all ages fly back from foreign lands, return home from university or have simply decided that the best course of action is to hunker down together, there’s quite a lot of – shall we say friction? – being generated.

It’s a bit like an endless Boxing Day when everyone has eaten too much and can’t wait to get away. Only without the feast and with the grim knowledge that this could all go on for some time.

Just because you’re family doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the same attitude on how to deal with coronavirus, any more than you share opinions on how to load the dishwasher or who should govern the country.

But the current bickering is more along the lines of where is safe to visit, who is safe to allow out and who is safe to allow in. Will something we’re considering doing be judged selfish by the others?

The fact that we are all in uncharted territory makes us more emotionally volatile than usual. As does our genuine underlying concern about each other’s wellbeing.

However, around our kitchen table there are a lot of discussion about how to proceed in daily life that end: ‘Well, you never want to listen to anyone else anyway…’

It’s business as usual to some extent. But then again, not really.