DAY 6: THE FIRST WEEKEND

MIRIAM 6 – It’s Saturday, but this morning I had to focus to remember what day it was. Only two days ago we had to shut down the shooting of “Un posto al sole”, we will get back at it as soon as we can, but right now the idea of not having a job makes my whole world collapse, considering that it is not a job that we can carry on as “smart working”. So you just shut it down while, by the look in the eyes of the others, you understand that they share your own worry about when we will be coming back.

We will come back, everything will go back to normal, but we will all be “new” men and women, with new fears, new hopes, and new ways of approaching each other.

So today is Saturday, and until a few weeks ago, in an ordinary Saturday, I would have made plans with friends, maybe a glass of wine at someone’s house, or drinks at a bar.. If it were an ordinary Saturday, right now I’d be getting ready to go out.

So that’s what I did: earlier this afternoon I created a chat group on Skype and I set a “date” at 8pm for all the couples we usually hang out with to have a drink “together”.

At 8pm we were all there, the screen divided in ten small boxes, finally all of us “visibly” close. Everybody was talking at the same time, you couldn’t understand a thing! But we laughed, we looked into each other’s eyes, making sure that everybody was alright. Things we normally take for granted but that right now feel so precious. We raised our glasses and made a toast to us and to life, that keeps going despite everything.

 Despite the masks, the gloves, the disinfectants and the distance, the lockdown and the moments of despair.

Despite the bad things that happen so close to us, everyday closer, everyday less unrelated to us.

The virus is getting close, it is coming right outside our doors.

Let’s stay inside, everything is gonna be alright.

ANDREA 6 – The first Saturday (inside the red line) is unforgettable. I realized that it wasn’t a working day because at 9:30 am I didn’t get the usual Skype call from my team. We call this meeting “the good morning coffee” because first, we work in the coffee industry, and second because we decided to replicate from a distance our routine of starting the day at the office with a coffee in the break room.

Today, instead, we thought about how making our home even more complete, in the effort of not changing our habit of doing a thousand things in a day, while remaining between four walls.

We bought a small TV for our bedroom (to avoid falling asleep on the couch and waking up at 3am, messing up with our sleep rhythms), a deck of French cards to learn how to play Burraco, just like my parents, and a board game for the kid. We wanted to get Taboo, but you can only play with four people or more, and right now we can’t let a fourth person in the house.

But it doesn’t matter, we are lucky enough being the three of us. It is a lot, these days.