I had never seen the park so busy.
Slightly overwhelmed, I paused at the entrance, and, for a moment, I considered leaving, but it was such a beautiful day. Significant snowfall overnight had given way to a cold, bright, crisp winter’s morning, and I could see why it had drawn so many out of hiding.
As I began walking down the path through the centre of the park, the snowy slopes sparkled in the sunlight. Small clusters of people were scattered like coloured polka dots across the white landscape, and it was a sight that was heart-warming and heart-breaking all at once.
At first glance, it resembled a normal winter scene – excited children sledging and building snowmen, people walking their dogs or simply enjoying the sunshine – and I appreciated the pure beauty of this seemingly ordinary day.
And yet, nothing this year had been truly normal, and a closer look revealed the strangeness of it all – the distance between the different groups and the lack of interaction. So many of us there in the same space, and yet not really together.
The date was December 28th 2020, the third day of the second full COVID lockdown, and the reality of the difficult weeks that lay ahead was sinking in. It had been a year of disappointment, altered plans, fear and isolation, culminating in the last-minute cancellation of anything resembling a normal Christmas.
While I had been fortunate to have a one-day-only visit to family, even that had been spent shivering by an open window, fearful with every breath that I might inflict a deadly disease on my loved ones. Now that Christmas was over, all contact between households was forbidden once again. Who knew how long it would last this time?
Lockdown in the spring had been bad enough, but the thought of a repeat performance in the darkness of winter was a horrible prospect. A large part of me longed to hibernate and wake up when it was all over.
But as I walked through the park that day, I felt hope begin to rise.
I heard the children’s joyful shouts and saw the happiness on their faces. Unaware of the magnitude of all that was going on in the world, they simply delighted in the fact that they could have fun in the snow, and their joy was infectious.
I saw the care everyone was taking of one another that day. Despite the large number of people in the park, everyone was being considerate of others’ space, smiling from a distance but avoiding getting close.
I felt the warmth of the sunshine cutting through the icy air, and I knew that, although there was still a long, hard winter ahead, eventually the spring would come.
Lockdown would not last forever. One day we would gather without fear. One day we would sit close and embrace one another again.
One day this would all be a distant memory.