If I Could Relive One Day: Our Lockdown Months That Changed Everything
When people ask If I Could Relive One Day, I never think of a date circled on a calendar. My mind travels instead to a span of four and a half months in early 2020, when the world contracted in fear, and my home expanded with life.
My son, my daughter-in-law, and my two grandsons had arrived toward the end of February. We travelled through New Delhi, stood barefoot in the serenity of the Golden Temple, wandered through the rose-hued corridors of Jaipur, and eventually returned to Vijayawada content and unhurried. The children were six and three – an age when wonder attaches itself to everything.
None of us sensed how precious that ordinariness was about to become.
In March, their parents took a brief trip abroad while the boys remained with me. By then, news of an unfamiliar illness had begun to circulate, yet it still felt distant. Plans were intact. Tickets were confirmed. Life appeared orderly.
On the eve of departure, my elder grandson wrapped himself around me with unexpected urgency. He asked, with complete sincerity, whether his journey home could be postponed. That night, he slept with his face resting against mine, as though proximity itself could secure permanence. By morning, he had developed a fever. Concern replaced routine. Travel was delayed.
Within days, the nation entered lockdown. What many experienced as confinement unfolded, for me, as an unanticipated blessing.
A Household in Full Bloom
While uncertainty intensified beyond our gates, vitality gathered within them. The kitchen became the nucleus of our days. I experimented constantly, refining familiar dishes and inventing new ones with almost scholarly dedication. I documented each effort and wrote about the process with unusual discipline, eventually assembling the collection into a digital volume. My eBook is available on Amazon as Easy Indian Fusion Cooking. Creativity felt less like effort and more like instinct.
Meanwhile, the garden yielded generously. We plucked drumsticks from tall branches, gathered guavas still warm from the sun, and harvested clusters of cherry tomatoes with triumphant ceremony. The children moved through the yard as though it were an endless landscape rather than a modest patch of earth.
Strangely, fatigue never visited me. Energy arrived each morning as though summoned by joy itself.
Small Gestures, Enduring Impressions
The days were filled with quiet marvels.
One afternoon, my grandson transformed a watermelon into an elaborate fruit basket and presented it to his dad with solemn pride. On another occasion, he joined me in the kitchen to bake thumbprint cookies with remarkable independence, narrating his method with theatrical confidence.
There was also the evening I prepared a hearty meal for the family and began assembling a simple vegetarian pizza for myself. Before I could complete it, he intervened, assuming creative control. He arranged slices of green and red pepper into a cheerful face and, with mischievous precision, placed a ribbon of mozzarella beneath the “nose,” announcing that every face required character.
I laughed until I could scarcely stand upright. The pizza was imperfect, exuberant, and unforgettable.
Celebration Within Walls
That year, I marked Holi not as an observer but as a participant. Colour drifted through the air, laughter travelled from room to room, and restraint dissolved into shared delight. Our home resonated with sound – conversation layered over music, playful quarrels dissolving into affection, doors opening and closing with rhythm rather than haste.
Beyond our boundary walls, the world grappled with uncertainty. Within them, we inhabited abundance.
The Gift of Unplanned Time
At the time, I did not label those months as extraordinary. I lived them – cooking, writing, tending, dancing, listening. Only later did I understand that what felt like an inconvenience had, in truth, been a profound reprieve from separation. It was summer, and I made popsicles for the kids. Arian wanted a different colour every day. I made them with natural fruit juices, and they were lapped up with utmost joy.
When I think of my son now, I do not anchor my memory in absence. Instead, I return to that season – to shared journeys, to evenings around the table, to grandchildren racing through corridors, to a household brimming with unrestrained presence.
If I were offered the chance to revisit a single day, I would decline. I would choose instead those uninterrupted months when time loosened its grip and allowed us to dwell together fully.
I would return to that season. And I would leave it exactly as it was.
@wordsmithkaur
@wordsmithkaur
