Grade 9 , Thlokomelo Child Care Centre
A couple of years back my mom hardly spent time at home nor with me. She was always working and she never gave me her attention.
At times I would feel lonely and hardly spoke about the things that bored me. Even during the holidays she would be working in her room and every time I tried to confront her about it, she would just get loud or scold at me, telling me that she wakes up and goes to work for me to have a better future. I would constantly worry that I might lose my mom because of work. Months went by and my mom started taking night shifts. I couldn’t even eat dinner with her because during the day she was working and she came home for an hour or only to change, bath, sleep and head back to work.
During those months that she was working nights shifts, a happy version of me faded and some sort of anger grew inside me. I started spending my time alone: I ate dinners alone and I lived in my room. This continued for years, up until 2019.
2019 was not a good year at all because later that year a new virus was introduced to the world, COVID-19. This started in China and nobody ever thought that it would spread. This virus started killing people and spreading rapidly all around the world until it approached South Africa. When the President announced that we would go under an enforced lockdown, nobody ever took him seriously up until the time things started to become severe. Nobody was allowed to go out. The National Defence Force was deployed to watch people and the only people that were allowed to go out were the essential workers.
This happened for a really long time up until my mom got retrenched from work. She started stressing out and there was nothing to do to help her but to try and have a solid relationship with her.
Months went by and we started spending a lot of time together: communicating, cooking, making art. She gave me her attention. Home was now my happiest place- sharing moments with my mother and making good memories together. Although the virus was still spreading my mom and I were protected at home.
A few months later, around August, my mom got her job back and it was time I went back to school, but that didn’t ever stop us from spending time together. On weekends she would help me with my school work, then we would walk to the parks together, wearing masks and using sanitisers to disinfect germs from our hands, which is compulsory to do.
Whenever I feel bad that a lot of people lost their jobs due to this pandemic, I think of how I shared love with my mother during the time of the coronavirus.