Annika Hanne On Hope & Holding
— By Annika Hanne
Hope And Holding.
And maybe one day I’ll tell you about it.
How we turned hysteria into hope through our sheer and binding humanness.
How the world stayed home and the streets and the soils took a deep and deserving breath.
How we went for long walks in the morning and met in the kitchen at 4pm for slow dancing and even slower cooking.
How daddy learnt to bake the best bread and we had the time to watch—sitting on the bench top kicking our feet.
How the kitchen table once again became the heartbeat of households everywhere, instead of fast and frantic intersections of alarm clocks and granola bars. A place to eat breakfast in the morning, to sit with others physically or exists together from afar.
How we played gin at night and drank coffee on the couch at lunchtime and the way we went down to the garden each evening to pick tomatoes and check on the pumpkins, looking at the harvest with a brand new meaning.
How we remembered to remember our neighbours—the ones next door and otherwise.
How we thought deeply about what it meant to go without, and how the removal of convenience was maybe not such a bad thing.
How we smiled through the uncertainty and turned panic in to pause.
How we just stopped for a moment and let the hours stretch out like oceans.
How the street lamps turned on for the birds while the people watched and waved from their windows.
How the balance was bending to benefit beauty, and how the artists had time to create.
How even when we were forced to be apart, we understood now more than ever, that we were all from the same sea.
How the slow return of simply being with ourselves taught us to be brave in the face of new ways of being.
Maybe one day I’ll tell you about it.
The way we all came home.
And how as the Earth settled little, we did too.
19 - 03 - 20