Rainbows have taken on a new significance as lockdowns steadily infiltrate our lives, changing the way we interact, eat, sleep, exercise, work, study and play. We have become autonomous family units which are forbidden, for now, from contacting and interacting with those outside our immediate family unit.
Andrà tutto bene, everything will be alright, caption bright renditions of rainbows stuck in people's windows around Europe. Unfortunately, not so in Singapore. Like the apathetic attempt at clapping to show appreciation for those on the frontline helping to save lives, look after people and keep our countries functioning, the only rainbows we find are in the sky. So, I was like a small child at 7.22 am this morning when I looked up and saw a rainbow across the park connector jogging track. There was hardly anyone else about to see it, although my NSman son spotted it as he ran past me, bellowing in my left ear "on your left".
I suppose, after feeling so down-heartened over the weekend as I watched the picnic-in-the-park-ers congregating in the neighbourhood, and the news this morning that we had reached another milestone in cases - 233 - walking into a rainbow felt as if I was walking into hope and things would change for the better.
This was my daily silver lining.
Incidentally, while Singapore's COVID-19 cases are low compared to many countries, our population is 5.8m, the size of a small city. So, these numbers along with the upward trend are worrying.
The chalk decorated paths, with crisses and crosses and turtles and rabbits and eggs and happy easter in pastels, all added to the glimmer of hope.
Or had I been taken in by a media-induced, society-planting of something to hang on to?
And then cold reality of what the #lockdowns around the world mean hit home. At 7.33am this morning, my live in Filipina helper's mother passed away. She passed away in a hospital in a city in the north of the main island. The cruelty this virus has wrought was callously close to home. We sat and hugged a member of our family, who had watched our boys grow up into young men. We held her, as she sobbed for the fact that she cannot return home to say her last farewells and put her mother to rest next to her father who passed away last October.
Today's silver lining had just disintegrated.
Please, put any feelings of self-pity you may have aside, be kind, help others and #stayathome, practise #socialdistancing and #savelives.
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