Easy Saturday on Uneasy Year
My mother loves tennis and I believe that’s how I grew the fondness on it too. Today, just like another day when Grand Slam is happening, she woke up high spirited, ready to watch any match for the day and picked her favorite for the win. She’s always a fan of Djokovic since he entered the third-wheel of Federer and Nadal rivalry, while I’m always a huge fan of Nadal. She’s always bothered by odd ritual of Nadal before serving, but then again, my mother I believe has quite severe case of OCD that she strongly disagrees. Understandably, people in her generation don’t talk about mental health at all. It’s still deemed taboo and us, the children from younger generation, can only do so much to make sure she lives comfortably at her age now.
Last night, when we watched the match of Thiem vs. Kyrgios, the arena was crowded. Spectators were cheering each time the local hero, Kyrgios set a point. It was almost surreal to see the huge amount of people gathered together at the same time, in the same place, celebrating a great match and pure sportsmanship of Tennis that I always love while we’ve been staying inside and hunkering down since the pandemic hit over a year ago. Worse yet, we’re only 6 hours-flight to Melbourne where the Slam is happening. Since the country claimed to have 0 local transmission case of covid-19, it’s deemed safe to hold the slam in usual manner — with spectators and neither with mandatory mask nor physical distancing. We held our breath for a split second when watching it the first time as it’s still far ahead for us in this country to go back to the life we had before. With the soaring number of covid case in our country, it seems to me the only hope is herd immunity. But we’re a nation of 250 million people. Do the math, my mortgage is probably done by then.
But this morning, the view was back to our familiar scene when we watched the match of Medvedev vs. Krajinovic. The stadium was empty and somehow it gave me an easy feeling; that our familiar scene is quietness and emptiness.
So my brother and I drove back to my house after having a feast, as usual, for lunch at parents’ house. It was 20 minute of quiet drive to home from there. My brother ordered some coffee from the shop nearby and get it delivered. I grabbed David Sedaris’ book that I’ve been wanting to finish since last month and walked to the bench in the garden to read.
He put some music on and started to do his business as usual — arrange some flowers and get them delivered. It’s almost dark outside when I realized the pages are running thin. Almost 6 pm, I went back inside house. We talked a bit about food to order for dinner.
Saturday went by just like that. It’s approaching mid February. And we’re still just doing everything from home, just like a year ago. Probably until the wit’s end.
