Cabin Days
Some mornings we wake to our ‘to do’ lists and feel overwhelmed. The news on the morning radio is disheartening and depressing. The skies outside the window settle low and heavy. One of us will look at the other.
“Cabin day?”
“Damn straight.”
Cabin days. Also known as Sleeping In, Playing Hooky, Calling in Sick, AWOL. Or perhaps you know it more as Staycation, Time Out, Mental Pause, The Desperate Respite.
Rituals on cabin days are unique to the household. Our cabin days may involve me and Darwin freezing in a roadside ditch to photograph a frost-covered tree. We might break out the watercolour paints and attempt a composition. Or we might be brave and try something new; Darwin made his first sewing machine project (Christmas stockings) on a recent cabin day. His efforts were… decent! The only rule that works is that what you’re doing shouldn’t feel like work.
The musician Jack Johnson knows all about cabin days. “Maybe we can sleep in/Make you banana pancakes/Pretend that it’s the weekend now,” he croons to his lover. But can we pretend all the time?
COVID-19 has changed cabin days, as it has affected so many things. For some, the delight in being confined to home has morphed into cabin fever. When we cower at the thought of yet another round of Netflix binge-watching, or cringe at the taste of our fourth (or fifth) quarantini, we must conclude that there was value in just getting out and being around other people. Even if it was just the office. For others, the home has turned into a crowded circus. Carving out true alone time is impossible in a space now a messy mishmash of work and family life.
There’s a third set of people who find their home life changed because of the pandemic. Usually invisible to society, domestic violence against women and children has not only escalated but also altered because of the increased time spent in the home. Recent reports such as the survey quoted in this CBC article not only found a rise in violence in Canadian homes, but the lethality of the encounters was also increasing. Being forced into isolation with an abuser is a nightmare. What do you do when your home is not safe and there’s even fewer places to go?
I never really thought much about this issue before hearing of it in the news. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the stress of this pandemic threatens us in unequal ways. I feel grateful for the sanctity of my own home and appreciative of the safe and fun activities I do here. On cabin days, I now spend at least some time thinking about those who never enjoy a cabin day in their home, and how we as a society can do better by them. Cabin days belong to us all.
