Once Upon A Time . . . I worked in a male-dominated industry

I am a scientist.  When I was at university 25 years ago studying Chemistry, there were probably twice as many male students as female.  That has evened out somewhat in the intervening years, but the industry (particularly the mining industry) skews male.  This is particularly noticeable at the higher levels – General Manager and above.

There are a lot of reasons for this.  Predominant amongst them is what happens when a person starts a family, and how it tends to be the mother whose time at work is most affected.  Many women will take at least one maternity leave break during their career.  Some will take more than one.  Some will return to work part time for a period (or forever).  And there are many aspects of work in the mining industry that are not especially conducive with being the primary parent.

My husband and I worked for the same large mining company for many years.  We both flew in and out of mining sites, sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for a few weeks.  At times, we managed to coordinate our trips to go together; other times one of us might fly in on Saturday morning from a week on-site, the other would fly out Sunday afternoon for a week on a different site.  We even did a couple of secondments – one a three-month stint at a refinery in northern Australia, the other a three-year transfer to a refinery in Canada.  Sometimes, we worked ten or twelve hour days, both on-site and in the lab.  There were days when we needed to come into the lab at midnight to take samples.  Some shifts were night shift.  At other times, there might be a teleconference with people overseas that had to happen at 5am or 10pm, or an experiment ran over and we didn’t get home till 8pm, even though we’d arrived in the lab at 6am. Travel to and from site often happened on the weekend or late in the day.  This was all just part of the job. 

For the first seven or so years of our employment, this worked well.  If someone asked, “Can you be there tomorrow?” we could both easily say yes.  While living in Canada, I was once asked on a Wednesday evening to be in Australia by Sunday (and I was).  If a colleague needed an assistant for the midnight sampling run, one of us could help out.  If something ran late, one (usually both) of us could stay to ensure the work was completed properly.  We were a useful team – we came to work together, so we’d leave together, which meant that any chemical handling (which requires two people to be present for safety reasons) could easily be managed by the two of us together.

The reason for this?  We didn’t have children.  We weren’t constrained to an arrival or departure time that worked with daycare drop off and pick up.  We weren’t juggling a cranky baby or toddler who didn’t want to go to bed when we were doing teleconferences at weird hours.  If one of us was away for work, there was no school run, after school activities or friends’ birthday parties to manage alone.    

Seven years into my employment with the company, I told my boss I was pregnant.  After the initial flurry of congratulations were done, I started hearing the same questions from everyone. “So, what are your plans?”  “What are you going to do once the baby’s here?” “How much time will you take off?” “Are you planning to come back to work?”  “How will you manage work and kids when you come back?” These questions were pretty much all just out of interest, friends and colleagues wanting to know what I thought I might do.  The interesting part was the questions that my husband got.  “What is Meg planning to do?” “How long is she planning to be off work?” “Do you think she’ll come back?”  Not a single person asked him what he planned to do now that he would be a father.  No one asked him how he’d manage to do his job while being a dad.  The assumption was that his (work) life could continue exactly as it always had, without being affected by his new “fatherhood” status.

Over the eight years that followed, his work didn’t really change.  He would still work long hours as necessary – while we continued working in the same lab, it was always me who reminded him that we needed to leave work to pick up the children from daycare.  He would still go to site, sometimes at very short notice, for a week or three.  If he flew out on a Sunday and back on Saturday morning, I’d organise everything to do with the kids, and then do all of the above myself.  On the occasions where he called to say that he had to stay an extra few days, I continued to manage it.  If he had a teleconference from home, I’d make sure the children weren’t interrupting. If there was an after-work event, or a special training course that we both needed to attend, I’d organise the babysitter or arrange for the children to be taken to and from their activities.

Over that eight years, I had three lots of maternity leave.  I transitioned to permanent part time (three days a week) work.  When requested, I modified the three days per week that I worked to suit the needs of the group I worked for.  If a meeting or a training workshop was scheduled on a day I didn’t work (which happened more frequently than you’d think), I would attend if required.  I would check emails and attend to urgent matters on my non-work days. The first time a public holiday fell on one of the days that I worked, my boss asked me what day I was planning to work to “make up” for the public holiday.  I asked him what day he planned to work to make up for his public holiday.  He never asked that question again.

I was asked to travel for work a few times during those eight years.  Once was while I was breastfeeding.  Another time was for an hour-long meeting in town to the north, that would have required me to leave home at 5am and not get home until after 7pm.  I said no and dialled in to the meeting.  My absence at the meeting was commented upon several times, “Why couldn’t you make it, Meg?  It’s not that big a deal.” The part where my husband was on-site somewhere else, I had a toddler (whose daycare opened at 7am and closed at 6pm) and I was five or six months pregnant did not factor into any of my (male) co-workers’ ideas of a “big deal”.  The only time I did travel was for an induction course that my boss insisted I take, mostly to meet some of his own objectives; “100% of senior staff inducted at the refinery”.  Because of the timing of the course, I had to leave home on Sunday at lunchtime to be on-site for a 7am start the next morning, and then not get home until 7pm on Monday.  I completed the induction as required, but never needed to visit the site, so it seemed a waste of time and money to me.

In the seven years that I worked pre-children, I was promoted twice.  In the eight years post-children, promotion was never mentioned.  All of my “career progression” discussions started with my boss saying, “Well, I know you work part time . . .”

My husband started work with the company a few months before I did.  He had a Bachelors degree and three years of experience working in the field; I had no field experience but an honours degree and a PhD.  His starting salary was slightly more than mine, and my salary never caught up to his.  In all the years he’s worked for the company, he’s always received an “above expectations” rating in his performance reviews, even in years when he’d received a promotion (he’s had five of those in time he’s worked for the company).  I worked for the same company for sixteen years, and I received only one “above expectations” rating – all my others were “meeting expectations”.  In one particular year, having gone above and beyond in my work, travelling extensively, getting excellent reviews from the third-party clients that I’d done work for, I pushed especially hard to be assessed as “above expectations”.  My boss (and his boss, when I took it further) told me that because I’d got a promotion that year, it wasn’t appropriate that I also got a higher performance grading.  When I pointed out that my husband had got a high performance review and a promotion in the same year, they told me their decision was final. 

My husband, it must be said, is an exceptional worker. He deserves those high performance ratings.  He deserves the bonuses and the pay rises that he gets.  It just always seemed that there was less need for him to push for things, whereas I always had to make my case far more thoroughly than he did, or deal with issues that simply never came up for him.

Things to do in 2021

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.  I don’t really see the point of them.  This year, however, inspired by an online person who I know in real life, I’ve decided to write myself a list of 21 things I’d like to accomplish in 2021.

1. Read 50 books this year.
2. Write someone a letter once a month.
3. Do at least 20 minutes of exercise each day.
4. Have an at-home date night with my husband every second Friday (no children allowed!).
5. Have dinner out with a friend at least six times this year (no children or husbands allowed!).
6. Have a night away for our 20^th wedding anniversary (COVID meant that didn’t happen last year).
7. Family movie night once a month.
8. Teach my girls to cook two meals each.
9. Alcohol-free January.
10. Complete a senior first aid course.
11. Write one personal and one work blog post per fortnight.
12. Plan and take a family holiday.
13. Get three paid writing jobs.
14. Write at least six chapters of the novel that’s been in my head for the last two years.
15. Take each of my kids out to do something fun (just me and that kid) once per month.
16. Talk to my mum at least once a week.
17. Start having Sunday brunch all together.
18. Wait thirty days before buying anything new to make sure I really need it.
19. Join a book club.
20. Volunteer in my son’s Prep class each week.
21. Start a story journal with each of my daughters.

So far, I’m doing pretty well with this.  Let’s see how I’m going by the middle of the year.

On the beginning of a new year . . .

So, roughly a year ago, I was musing about All The Things I'd done in the 2000s to date, and wondering about what 2020 would bring.  A global pandemic was not something that I anticipated, mind you.

2020 was a weird year.  There's no other way to describe it.  It showcased some of the worst things about humanity (physical confrontations over the last packet of toilet paper in the shop; people declaring their "freedoms" more important that following medical advice), but it also showed the best.  People delivering groceries for random strangers.  Drive-by birthday parties.  New ways to celebrate long-standing traditions, like lighting up the dawn on ANZAC Day. 

Last year also shone a light on the disconnect between science and the general population.  The ongoing changes and updates to scientific and medical advice were seen as a sign that scientists and medical professionals didn't know what they were doing.  For the record, those changes and updates were good evidence that science was working just as it should - when new information came to light, it led to changes in the advice.  

And who could have predicted that we'd have one vaccine ready to go by the end of the year, let alone multiple vaccines?  That is the result of an extraordinary effort all over the world by multiple groups of sciences and medical professionals.  It's an amazing feat that really should be celebrated.

Interesting, though, are my children's thoughts on 2020.  I sat down with them yesterday and asked the three of them the same few questions about the year.  I've been doing this for years and have an ongoing 'diary' for each of them that I update each year.  Yesterday, not one of them mentioned COVID.  There were no complaints about staying home or being isolated.  My eldest made lots of comments about how awesome it was to have guinea pigs and how much she loves them.  The middle kid's highlight and happiness was all around getting roller skates and learning to skate.  And my son told me how exciting it had been to go to Kindy, and how he can't wait to start school later this month.  

And it was like that all year.  Sure, they complained occasionally about the things that were cancelled (school, parties, sports, activities).  But mostly it was about the good.  They all talked about their friends.  Skyped with some for ages.  Told me how much fun it had been to walk around the horse park near our house and talk to the goats who are in the next paddock.  They talked about climbing trees together, drawing chalk pictures on the driveway, painting rocks to leave around the neighbourhood.  

Now, I understand that we were luckier than most.  Infection rates and illness here never got out-of-control.  We had no change to our income.  My husband could work from home easily and safely.  We live in a safe area with reliable services.  We had all the food that we needed, the ability to go outside and walk, things to do to entertain ourselves.  And my kids remember those parts.  They remember being together and having fun.  

So, that will be my take away from this rather unusual year - that it was all about being together at home with the people I love best. 

Happy New Year.

But they'll think I'm a girl!

 My son has long hair.  It’s beautiful hair – golden brown with a slight curl at the end.  His hair is thick and glorious and (when brushed properly) very, very smooth.  And it has grown past his shoulders.  His fringe is non-existent – the front of his hair hangs to just below chin level.

He’s always had a lot of hair.  His sisters were both essentially bald as babies – they both had their first haircut at almost three.  He had so much hair that he genuinely needed a haircut at nine months, but his temperament did not allow for that – he had his first haircut at one.  I’ve cut his hair myself a couple of times, using the clippers that I cut his dad’s hair with. 

When he was younger, he didn’t really have an opinion on his hair.  I kept it short, clipped to the number 3 setting on my clippers.  My husband has a zero (almost completely shaved), so I didn’t really think that the 3 was particularly short.  For the longest time, he was happy with that.  Then lockdown happened, and he didn’t want me to cut his hair.  And then he didn’t want to have a haircut at all.  And then he was immensely pleased with the beautiful, long hair that resulted.  He is less pleased about brushing said hair, mind you, but I have made that a condition of the long hair – to keep it, it must be brushed daily.

My other requirement is that it needs to be tied back off his face.  He’d wander around with it hanging in his eyes, but I don’t like that, plus he is forever running into stuff (or getting his hair into his mouth or his food) if it’s not tied back.  He likes his ears covered, so we have arrived at a compromise – the front “fringe” of his hair is pulled back into a small pony tail on the top of his head, the rest is left down.

Over the last few months, we have been discussing school and what we’ll do with his hair.  Although the school he’ll be going to has no official hair policy, I have an official I-despise-nits policy, so long hair will be tied back in a proper pony tail to limit the chances of him bringing those nasty little suckers home (as a sidebar, I made it through my entire childhood without ever having nits.  The first year that both my daughters picked them up, I managed to acquire them from the same girl-child TWICE.  I have almost waist-length hair.  It’s fine, but there is lots and lots of it.  Getting a nit comb through my hair is an absolute epic drama.  Nits suck).  We have talked about having all his hair tied back in a pony tail at school.  He seemed cool with it.

So, cut to his Prep step-up day.  This is the day where he goes to school, meets his teacher, sees his classroom, gets to meet a few of his classmates.  He was super excited.  In school uniform by 6am.  Kept asking if we could leave now (our step-up time was 10am).  About 20 minutes before we were going to leave, I told him I wanted to put his hair in a pony tail.  He lost his mind about it, insisted that everyone would think he was a girl with a pony tail.  Cried and cried and begged to have his hair down.  In the end I said that the front had to be tied back.  He requested a jaunty pony tail on top of his head, with the rest of his hair brushed down.

We got to school and were talking to another family, a mum and her daughter who’d arrived at the same time as us.  The teacher arrived and announced, “Oh, we’ve got two girls here first!” My son, who had spent ages telling me a pony tail would make them think he was a girl and how he didn’t like that, just grinned at her and did not care at all.  I said he was a boy.  We moved on.

Compounding the long-hair-means-girl issue is the fact that my son has a gender-neutral name.  It’s not even one of those names with different male/female spelling (like Peter/Peta), so it can be a little confusing for others sometimes.  Entertainingly, my eldest daughter (who has relatively short hair and has been mistaken for a boy on many occasions) also has a gender-neutral name. Unlike her brother, her name has male and female spelling, so when it’s written down, it’s clear she’s a girl.  My middle kid has a very definitely female name.  I don’t believe there is even a male equivalent to her name (like Julian/Juliette or Andrew/Andrea).  There is not even a nickname possible that could even hint at being male.  And she has waist-length blonde hair, loves a dress and sparkles and favours hair clips and bands (the more the merrier).

As an aside, two days after his Step-Up day, it was ridiculously hot and humid here.  I told my son I was tying his hair in a ponytail to keep his hair off his back and neck and maybe let him cool down somewhat.  He moaned and whined all the way through the hair-tying process.  Once I’d managed to get it all tied back (it took four times longer than necessary because of the whining), he looked at himself in the mirror and announced rather smugly, “You know, I do look pretty cool.” And ran around with a ponytail for the next three hours, happy as a bird.

On Healthcare

 My parents have always had private health insurance.  Always.  When I was younger, if you were a full-time student, you were covered under your parents’ private health insurance until you were 25.  I was still a full-time student at 25, so I was covered by their plan until then.  The day of my 25^th birthday, my then-fiancé/now-husband transferred his single-person private health to a couple one, and I joined his.  I’ve never not had private health insurance.  Not even for a day.

Our private health insurance currently costs our family of five $560 a month.  My husband’s company pays just over half of this as part of his salary package, so our cost for our insurance is about $250 a month.  It’s pretty good insurance, covering most things.  The only exceptions to our insurance level is joint replacements and dialysis.  Neither of these are covered. 

Private health insurance in Australia also does not cover the cost of a visit to your doctor (general practitioner or specialist) or the cost of any medications.  Medical visits are covered by Medicare, which is available to all Australian citizens and residents, and the cost of some medications is subsidised or reduced (also by the government), particularly for those on lower incomes.  Medicare may not cover the full cost of your doctor’s bill, but clinics will advertise if they are “bulk bill” (they only charge the standard Medicare fee per visit) or if they are not.  My local doctor, for example, charges approximately double the standard Medicare fee.  You pay the cost for the doctor’s visit, and then they process the Medicare rebate electronically.  The rebate money is in your bank account immediately.  The difference between these amounts is referred to as “the gap”.

Private health insurance does cover the cost of dental visits (regular check-ups and orthodontic work), glasses (although the actual eye-test is covered by Medicare), private hospital care and a variety of “complementary” therapies (think physiotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractor), although the type of therapy and cost covered depends on your plan.  Similar to Medicare, private health has a fixed cost for each service covered, and if you chose a place that charges more than that, you have to pay the difference.  Payment is made directly to the service provider – they will process your private health rebate electronically, and then you pay any difference owing.  Most health care funds will also give you a list of providers who charge the “standard” fee, so you can choose someone whose rates are fully covered.

I had three babies as a private patient.  My regular obstetrician’s appointments were subsidised by Medicare, with me paying the gap.  My obstetrician’s office provided a list of all costs upfront (including regular obstetrics visits, pregnancy ultrasounds, any extra blood tests), so I knew what I would need to pay, and what Medicare/private health would cover.  My private health cover has a $500 excess for obstetrics, which meant that I had to pay the private hospital $500 up front.  All other costs were charged directly to my health fund.  All of my children were born at the same hospital and I had a private room with each.  I stayed for six nights with the first, three nights with the second and four nights with the third.  Although four nights was the standard stay, they let me stay six with the first because she was in the Special Care nursery for the first four nights.  Both my obstetrician and her paediatrician wouldn’t discharge me without her.  For each of those three stays, I paid $500.  My health insurance paid the rest.

I’ve never had a disagreement with my health insurer over payment of a bill.  The closest it came to this was after my eldest daughter was born.  Because she was born not breathing, they did a number of tests (swabs and blood tests) to determine if she had an infection.  Over the course of the six days we were in hospital, they did about a dozen such tests.  The first two tests were done in the first minutes of her life.  She wasn’t actually registered as a patient at the hospital until after they’d intubated her and got her breathing (a course of action that I fully support), and these two first tests were therefore technically performed on an “out-patient”.  Consequently, they had a different code on them to the others, and the insurance didn’t cover these particular tests on an out-patient.  When I went in to get my rebates processed at my fund’s office, the woman helping me explained this.  I explained why she’d technically not been a patient at the time.  The woman gave me the details of what I’d need to get the tests recognised and covered (several forms signed by at least two of the doctors, information from the hospital), which sounded like a lot of effort to me.  I asked how much the rebate was worth.  She looked it up and told me $15.  I told her not to worry about it.

Let me please point out that I’d have gotten the same level of care if I’d been a patient in a public hospital, not in a private one.  The difference would have been in the room type (possibly a shared room) and in the length of stay (usually 24 – 48 hours for a regular birth, with a midwife coming to your home to check on you and the baby for a couple of days later).  I’d also have been allowed to stay longer in the public system with a baby in special care, just as I was in a private hospital.

To point to the strength of the Australian medical system, particularly in big cities – I’ve only ever had to call for an ambulance twice.  Both times were last year.  The first was for my son – he slipped and fell off the bed and hit his head.  The ambulance was there within ten minutes.  The paramedics did a full range of checks, even though he was very clearly all right by the time they arrived.  They offered to take us to the children’s hospital for observation and reminded me to call immediately if anything changed.  There was no charge at all for this.

The second ambulance was for me.  I had extreme dizziness, to the point where I couldn’t stand up.  Again, the ambulance was at my door within ten minutes.  The paramedics did all the standard checks, plus two separate ECGs in my living room.  They took me to a public hospital (they offered me a choice of three; I chose the closest) and I had to provide my Medicare details.  No one asked a thing about private health insurance.  I was in the waiting room for about three hours, during which time a nurse came round to do observations (blood pressure, temperature, etc) on everyone waiting there.  I saw a junior doctor (who did all the same things as the paramedics, plus another ECG and a pregnancy test).  The consultant (senior doctor) then came in and ran through all the same stuff (minus the ECG, although she did study the results of both the paramedics’ and the junior doctor’s ones).  By the time all this was done, I was feeling fine, and there was no obvious cause for my dizziness.  The consultant recommended I see my GP to have some bloodwork done. 

Total cost of my trip to hospital and all of that?  Zero.  The only thing I paid for was the taxi ride home.  I could have paid less (there is excellent public transport between the hospital and the suburb where I live), but given my prior dizziness, I figured a taxi was a better choice. 

We’re lucky to live in a place like we do, with accessible and affordable health care, with or without private health insurance.  Yes, we pay taxes to cover this privilege, but it’s something I’m perfectly willing to cover.  There are a lot of places in the world where health care isn’t as easy to get to or to afford.

Once Upon A Time . . . We moved to the other side of the world

A stroke of luck (or good timing) saw us offered an international secondment in our early thirties, and we decided that it might be a good idea to move halfway ‘round the world for a few years. 

My husband and I are both scientists; we met at university.  At the time, we both worked for the same company, and we relocated to a refinery and lab that the company owned in Canada.  I was offered a job that was similar to the work I’d been doing previously; my husband’s new role was as an engineer, not as a scientist.  We moved from the east coast of Australia to a town in the province of Quebec in Canada. 

And did I mention that we were both expected to carry out our new roles in French?

We’d both been learning French for a few years beforehand – our company was headquartered in Montreal, so a number of the English-speaking sections of the business offered French classes to employees.  We’d both started classes when they were offered to our group.  The classes were two hours long, once a week. If you’ve ever learned a language, you’ll understand that two hours a week is not really a lot.  Unless you’re a linguistic genius, two hours a week will not teach you to be fluent.  At best, after a year or so, you’ll be able to read basic signs and documents (like menus), book yourself into a hotel, order your dinner and tell a taxi driver where you’d like to go. 

So, we moved to Quebec.  My husband did a week of intensive French classes before we went; I did not.  When we arrived, we went straight into the language school at the local college – I had a three week course, my husband did four.  The language course that we did was the course that was done by government officials who were required to be bilingual, so they were fairly intensive.  Seven hours a day of one-on-one lessons with a teacher, living with a French speaking family during the course, two after-class activities per week with other students, visiting places of interest in the local area, speaking only French.  My husband and I elected to live with different families for the duration of our study, so that we didn’t speak English to each other.  Everyone around us (teachers, other students, home-stay families, our employers) thought this was either hilarious or crazy (or both), but by the end of the course, they all agreed that we’d done the right thing.

Even after our language course, we were both extremely basic French speakers.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  Our speaking was not the issue; the ability to understand a conversation was the bigger problem.  One-on-one, when the other person was speaking slowly, choosing their words well and NOT using slang, it wasn’t too bad.  In a meeting (or in a lunchroom full of people speaking in slang with their quite different regional accents), it was far more challenging.  Conversations on a telephone, absent of the non-verbal cues that you get through face-to-face interactions were horrid.

Three months into our three-year stay, my French was good enough to do my job, but it took an extra three months to feel confident on the telephone.  By the end of the first year, I could hold my own in any meeting, have high-level technical discussions with other scientists and write short technical documents in French.  It took my husband six months to reach the “good enough” stage, and the telephone took a little longer.  Interestingly, while my husband’s French was never anywhere near as good as mine, both grammatically or with regard to his ability to discuss technical detail, he easily developed the ability to understand his plant operators, speaking in their local accents, over a walkie-talkie with plant noise roaring in the background.  I remember listening to him argue his (technical) point with an old-school operator over a “Mike” (walkie-talkie/phone) one afternoon.  My French was far better than his, but I struggled to understand the operator over all the noise in the background.

Once we had the language under control, working in another country became far easier.  We both enjoyed the work that we did and the people that we worked with were interesting and (in general) accommodating while we were first settling in.  We travelled a lot in our free time, saw much of Quebec province and Canada in general, and managed to fit in several trips throughout the USA.  

Unlike others we knew who’d been on secondment, we had two very distinct advantages – firstly, we were both employed as part of the secondment, which meant that while we were working, we were both out and about, practicing the language, meeting new people and setting up our social networks.  One of us never relied on the other for our social connections, to organise activities, to translate anything in the day-to-day.  The second was that we didn’t have kids at the time.  So many of our colleagues had done the whole secondment thing once they had kids, and aside from the fact that the primary parent usually stayed at home and didn’t get a chance to have the same work interactions, there was also the negotiation of schooling (which was not a trivial thing in French-speaking Quebec) and your kids’ friends and all the rest, all in a language that you and the kids may not speak.

Our time in Quebec was our last great adventure in our lives before children and it serves as a very real marker of the point between “couple” and “family”.  It was an amazing experience to have had, even with all of the challenges it posed.

Dear Australia

The following was written and sent to Australia Post's "Dear Australia" project.

Today is the 13^th of June, 2020. There have been 7290 cases of COVID-19 in Australia, with 102 deaths. There are presently 405 active cases – 403 of these are classified “mild”, two are “serious or critical”. Roughly 1.75 million COVID-19 tests have been carried out. We’re in Level Two of re-opening. In Queensland, this means that up to 20 people can gather indoors and outdoors. Restaurants and cafés are open, non-contact and outdoor sports are permitted. Schools are open. Social distancing is still in place, and there are additional precautions, like giving your name and contact details at a restaurant. Unlimited travel within Queensland is permitted. The Queensland border is still closed; if you return from interstate or overseas, you must quarantine for two weeks.

I am 45 years old. I was born in Perth, grew up in WA, moved to Brisbane in 2002. I was in some form of education from 3 until 27, including a year as an exchange student in Brasil. I worked full-time until my eldest was born, part-time until two years ago, and now I am on the school P&C, the Kindy management committee and I volunteer in the community. I started a small business last year. I speak two other languages (Portuguese and French). I am relatively introverted, I don’t like large crowds or noisy places and I think that the last time I went to a large sporting event was an ice hockey game in Montreal 15 years ago.

My husband and I met at university. We were friends for a couple of years, dated for another two and got married in April 2000. He has been my best friend for nearly half of my life.  We worked for the same mining company for years, including three years in Quebec. He speaks French. He is a qualified Kung Fu master and has his own Kung Fu school. He is more introverted than me and also dislikes crowds. He plays guitar and bass and enjoys live music, preferably at small venues.

We have three children, who were all born in Brisbane.  We all have first names that start with the letter M.  Our daughters are 10 and 8, in Years 5 and 3 at the local state school, our son is 4 and at a community kindy.  The girls do several after-school activities – drama and singing for them both, violin and art for the eldest, tennis, guitar and Kung Fu for the younger.

We live in the western suburbs. My husband catches the train to his work in the city. The children’s school, kindy and activities are within walking distance. Our home is a renovated Queenslander, four bedrooms, two bathrooms – we bought it nine years ago.  We have a mortgage, but it is almost paid out. We have one car and don’t drive much – our car is 8 years old and has done under 60 000 kms.

The last few months have been an unusual affair.  In early March, I was talking to a friend and looking at some statistics around COVID-19 transmission and infection rate.  We both have science backgrounds – she’s a vet and I’m a chemist (scientist who studied Chemistry, not a pharmacist).  This showed how quickly a health system could be overwhelmed and how many people (with and without COVID-19) could die during a mass outbreak because the hospitals didn’t have the space to treat them all at the same time.

March was disconcerting.  The government was saying, “Schools are the safest place for children!” Schools, however, are not just for children.  How many of the teachers and staff were high-risk to COVID? How many of them cared for an elderly parent, or a partner with a compromised immunity?  There seemed to be a limited concern for the staff, and more concern for the need for “essential workers” to send their children at school.  School was being discussed, by the government at least, as a glorified babysitting service, not as an important pillar in our community, staffed by people whose particular skills were essential to the continued improvement and betterment of our society. 

Our eldest daughter’s birthday is in March, and she asked for a party with six friends – pizza and a movie at our house.  We made a deal with her when we sent out the invitations – if school was still open when the party rolled around, it could go ahead.  If school was closed, there would be no party.  We discussed this with her friends’ parents; we all figured that they were together every day at school.  No parents came into the house when they picked up and dropped off their girls – we were already socially distancing.

My husband started working from home in March.  Catching public transport every day at peak hour meant that he was in confined quarters with many others twice a day, so working from home was safer.  Within a week or two, his office was shut and everyone directed to work from home.

At school, there were policies that limited contact.  Assemblies became virtual, interschool sport was cancelled, all school sports days were postponed.  Parents were asked to limit time on school grounds.  Parent-teacher night was changed to a telephone call with or an email from your child’s teacher.  It was very different to “normal”.  By week 9, attendance was down at least 30%.  I had already decided that I was keeping my kids home in week 10 when the state government announced schools would be pupil free.  Children of essential workers and at-risk children were still able to go to school.   Even with the late notice, there were still online resources available for the kids for week 10.  My girls loved the fact that they could use laptops to do their schoolwork.  My son, also home from Kindy, decided that puzzles, drawing and cars were his “homework”. 

The school holidays were not too different from normal – my husband was working (albeit at home) and we’d had no plans to go anywhere.  We didn’t do a few of our usual things – there was no train ride into the city, no visit to the museum, no trip to the Botanical Garden. 

The first five weeks of Term 2 were planned to be pupil-free.  The teachers at my girls’ school did a remarkable job of organising five weeks of online learning, including video classes, blogs and chat boards, as well as weekly uploads of their work.  Several after-school activities moved online. 

Due to the decreasing COVID infection numbers, Queensland schools reopened for Kindy, Prep and Years 1, 11 and 12 at the start of week 4.  This sent my youngest back to school, while his sisters remained learning at home.  Two weeks later, they were back at school as well.

School is different now.  Apart from school staff, adults are not allowed onto school property.  We’ve had to run P&C meetings online because we can’t use the school’s staff room. Kindy will allow you into the grounds to drop your child off and pick up, but you can’t stay more than a few minutes.  All activities, incursions and excursions are cancelled for the term.  Childcare, out-of-school-hours care and kindergarten fees are all being paid for by the government.

This is how things have changed in general.  For us personally, the impact of isolation has been minimal.  We don’t go out all that much, outside of school and activities, so having to stay to ourselves was not difficult. 

Our home is large enough that we can each have our own space.  The kids have their own bedrooms; my husband set up his office in his music room, so at the end of the day he will shut down his laptop and pick up a guitar and play for 30 minutes or so.  He has had to forgo Kung Fu (he’s been studying this for over ten years) and temporarily close his school, which was disappointing – he’d only opened in late January, and by mid-March, he was closing it up.  His school will reopen in ten days.

We have a decent sized back yard, and the weather is warm enough that the kids are outside a lot.  We have a great set of monkey bars (with swing and trapeze) that they love.  They have plenty of toys, lots of art supplies, books galore.  When they are bored or need a change of scenery, there are three parks within walking distance.  While they weren’t allowed to use the playgrounds, they could run, climb trees, ride their bikes.  Our delivery services continued with only relatively minor delays – over the two months we were at home, my online shopping included new bikes, art supplies, pet supplies (the kids have guinea pigs), books, seeds and garden products, food, wine.

Our youngest daughter had her birthday in isolation.  We have promised to host the sleepover party that she wanted later in the year.  The owner of the local toy shop personally delivered one large box of presents I’d ordered, and helpfully hid them downstairs so that our daughter didn’t see them. 

In addition to her birthday, isolation also included my birthday, our 20^th wedding anniversary and Mother’s Day, all within a three week period.  My birthday was celebrated by a home-cooked meal and home-made gifts (my husband gave me a very cheesy fake gem and promised me a necklace when he could shop again).  For our anniversary, we ordered a delivery meal from the local French restaurant and a fancy bottle of wine online.  And Mother’s Day was breakfast in bed (made by the children) and various craft activities (provided by their teachers; creation supervised by Dad).

We were very lucky.  My husband’s work did not stop, and neither did his pay.  There has been no impact to his salary, his benefits, his overall income.  While our food (and, let’s face it, wine) costs have increased a reasonable amount, he’s not paying for public transport every day or buying lunch.  He’s saving at least an hour in transit time, and he is still getting the same, if not more, work done. 

We were also in a fortunate situation when the pandemic hit.  We’re all in good health and rarely get ill.  None of us have any chronic conditions or allergies, and we live in a safe area with reliable power, water and internet.  We have two laptops, so our daughters could both be online schooling at the same time.  We almost own our house, we have a reliable car and the ability to buy essentially anything that we need or want.  I routinely keep at least three weeks’ supply of dry goods, so we were unaffected by panic buying.  There is a grocery store, a bakery, a greengrocer and a butcher within a five minute drive, all of which remained open.  I’ve used the same grocery co-op for years – they delivered our fruit, vegetables, dairy products and dry goods on a Tuesday. We had only just returned from a trip to Western Australia, so we’d seen all our immediate relatives recently.

I have friends and family all over the world, including places that were (and still are) badly affected by COVID-19.  My Brasilian friends and family are still mostly in lockdown, my friends in Europe are still home-schooling their kids part time.  One of my best friends lives in the Netherlands, and when her elderly father went to hospital with an unrelated illness, no one could visit him or stay with him.  I have a friend in upstate New York whose three children are all involved in theatre, singing and performing.  Between the three of them, they had six separate performances cancelled, performances they’d each spent months rehearsing and preparing for.  Another friend, a single mother on Vancouver Island, lost her minimum-wage retail job and had to work out how to pay rent and buy food while homeschooling her two young kids.

It was a weird, disconcerting time.  We were worried about all the potential what-ifs and watching the COVID numbers go up made me dread a future where the hospitals were overwhelmed, or at least at their limit.  But this did not happen, and slowly, it started to feel ok again.  It doesn’t feel normal, won’t ever feel quite the same again I guess, but things became more promising, more hopeful.  ANZAC Day, standing at the end of my driveway with my family, watching the people on my street light up the dawn in remembrance, was the perfect example of this hopeful promise.

The one hard time that we had was something that would have been a challenge even without COVID-19.  When we flew to Perth in January, my Nan was in hospital for an operation.  We saw her the day after we arrived in Perth, just before the operation.  She was cheerful, chipper and frankly annoyed at being cooped up in a hospital with “all these sick, old people” (her words, not mine).  The operation went well and she was home a few days later.  We visited her three times; she was tired, but in good spirits.  And then she had a stroke.  I saw her three more times after that; I don’t think she even knew it was me.  When we left, I knew that I had seen her for the last time.

My Nan died on Easter Sunday. She’d led a beautiful, happy, wonderful life. She died when COVID restrictions were in full force – I couldn’t have flown to Perth without quarantining at either end of the trip.  Her funeral was allowed ten mourners.  Ten mourners for a woman whose life had touched so many.  Ten mourners for 93 years.  Ten mourners, when under any other circumstance there would have been hundreds of people to bid her farewell.  My kids and I watched her funeral online.

It could have been so much worse.  In many other countries, restrictions would have meant that no one was allowed with her – she would have died alone.  The rules here allowed for family to visit on the day she died.  My mother and father, my aunt, both my cousins and my sister all saw her, kissed her goodbye, told her that they loved her.  She was surrounded by her family in the last moments of her life and she died with my mother and my aunt holding her hands, my cousin sitting with them. 

I think our government did a good job controlling the outbreak.  The initial easing into restrictions led to some confusion – people weren’t sure what they were allowed to do.  And things changed quickly – one day they were saying outdoor gatherings of 100 was acceptable; a few days later, it was 50, then 20.  New Zealand’s approach of high-level restrictions all at once was easier for people to understand and to follow – ours was a bit confusing at the start.  Schools were my other point of contention – the federal government was making statements about why they should be open, but control rested with the states.  It seemed that the federal government were trying to make the states do what they were told, and ultimately the states made decisions based on the situation within their own borders.  I think the actions taken by the Queensland government were useful and helped decrease the severity of the situation.

The other aspect that Australia has handled well, particularly in the latter part of the outbreak, is testing.  Initially, testing was only available if you’d been overseas or had close contact with someone who had.  Now, if you have even vague COVID symptoms, you can get a test. Two days ago, I woke up with discomfort at the very back of my mouth.  I called my doctor, explained my symptoms and he replied with, “It’s close enough to a sore throat.  I’ll send you through a pathology form.” He gave me the address of the closest drive-through testing facility and emailed me (and them) the form.  I drove there (two suburbs away), had the test done and was on my way home in ten minutes.  The results (negative) were texted to me and my doctor within 27 hours.

So, Dear Australia, this was me during a global pandemic.  Far luckier than most, but still impacted by it all.  It was a strange and unsettling experience, and it will have far-reaching consequences.  It will be interesting to see who we are and where we’re at in a year, five years, twenty years.  Right now, we’re just coming out of the end of it, with plans in place to “get back to normal” (with social distancing).  What our new normal will be is anyone’s guess.