FROM MY DIARY…

…It is March 2020, and my older daughter’s preschool has shut down due to a global pandemic, like every other school in the world. Children across the globe will face endless months of sitting in a kitchen, a living room, on a porch, in an alley, feeling their worlds become smaller and more restricted by the moment, the suffocation of that experience affecting their mental and emotional health for years. I am struck by the poignant reality that at the very stage when children’s lives should be in expansion and their curiosity about the world encouraged and celebrated, a whole generation of children have seen their worlds dramatically reduced in a matter of days. They have become apprehensive of other spaces and other peoples, and fearful of their own place in a spectacular and vibrant world. Having grown up in several countries and across multiple languages, I was raised by a bohemian mother who wanted above all to gift me a sense of my belonging to the world, and to encourage in me a deep love and awe for the complex beauty of our world. I suddenly feel a sense of utter defeat that my own children will not have the same experience or learn the same generosity and empathy for other lands, other communities. Over a cup of tea one evening, I make a decision: If we are all to stay at home for the foreseeable future, and watch our lives become smaller and more restricted, then I will teach my children how to travel in our minds. That way, I think, their love for the world will continue to grow…