Frith Overy

When the pandemic hit I was a little over a year free from a violent and abusive marriage to my daughter’s father. My daughter and I, then 3 years old, had got up and left one day with just the clothes on our backs and £24 in my bank account. I was slowly regaining my freedom and rebuilding our lives but we had also lost so so much. Our clothes and possessions, our home and furniture and even my family. Overnight we had gone from being relatively comfortable in a semi-detached house with a yard, to sleeping in a friend’s spare-room and then eventually to a small, tired, rented, attic flat with no outdoor space and only one window that wasn’t in the ceiling and offering nothing but a grubby view of the sky through the old, blown glass panes.

As the world seemed to rapidly implode with the arrival of the pandemic, I watched all my friends stay afloat in their little family boats, arms protectively wrapped around one another, while we balanced precariously, just the two of us alone on a rickety makeshift raft which just one more unexpected wave would surely upturn. Our heads barely above water with no life vests in sight. I couldn’t stop thinking that only one adult simply wasn’t enough. We had no buffer, no contingency. I couldn’t be both Plan A and Plan B when I didn’t even know what my Plan A was. 

I owed this precious little person my life. Sometimes I think I mean that metaphorically and other days literally, but either way I owe her everything. I should have been repaying her with all the freedom and joy that a child deserves but instead I was forced to watch her climb the walls and press her face against the glass of the one window she could see out of like a melancholic caged animal. She deserved better, she deserved more. 

I cried. I panicked. I felt crippling guilt that I couldn't provide more, that I wasn't a 'better' Mum, but then I realised I could only do my best and cross my fingers that that would be enough. Fancy dress featured heavily during lockdown and our numerous isolation periods, particularly one favourite yellow Belle dress. I regularly hand-washed it and hung it over the bath to dry in an attempt to remove the paint/chocolate/pen/banana/glue/vomit that had ended up on it that day. I hid little chocolate eggs in the pots of our house plants so that she could have an indoor Easter egg hunt. The local deserted cemetery became our garden, with our permitted daily exercise often consisting of  'Walkie-Talkie Hide and Seek' amongst the higgledy piggledy gravestones. For her fifth birthday she had a Zoom party. We dropped off party bags to the doorsteps of her chosen guests. The children waved to each other through windows and from doorways, the first time they had seen each other's smiling faces in weeks or even months. It was wonderful. We crafted and painted and drew and constructed and of course baked.

And these are the memories that I hope my daughter will hold onto. The days upon days she was allowed to wear the same fancy dress costume. The regular loaves of freshly baked banana bread for elevenses. The gleeful squeals of being found crouched behind a headstone clutching a walkie-talkie. And above all, the feeling that we were a team. A small but mighty team of two.

Instagram: @frith.x