Madeleine, Auckland

It’s probably the first time we’ve all been under one roof since we were kids - our parents are absolutely fizzing. Arguably the best four weeks of their lives.

I’m Madeleine, I’m 27, I live in Auckland and I’m a brand strategist and founder of The Twenties Club.

I normally flat in Kingsland with some girlfriends, but when lockdown was announced my family and I decided we wanted to do it together – all five of us. We’re very much a ‘family comes first’ bunch, so it was sort of a no brainer. My younger sister flew up from Wellington, my older sister flew over from Sydney and I packed a bag and moved home. It’s probably the first time we’ve all been under one roof since we were kids - our parents are absolutely fizzing. Arguably the best four weeks of their lives. They never thought they’d have all three daughters in the house again! Well, not in this capacity anyway. We always spend Christmas together, but this is different. At Christmas there are boyfriends coming and going or people who can’t make it … and it’s not for an entire month (laughs).

So here we are! All five together, which is so special. Although that’s not to say it hasn’t been without compromise - it’s a very different experience having five adults living together, rather than three kids and two parents. On our first night, we all sat down for a meeting to set out some … not rules exactly, more to talk about things like: what does respect look like to each of us? What do we value? How does each person like to live and how can we respect that? Also, how to make sure everyone’s doing their bit so it doesn’t all fall to Mum and Dad. I think it was such an important conversation to have, because for all the ways we know each other as a family, we’ve all changed and evolved as adults too. I’m really thankful we had such an open line of communication from the get go. We also decided no one was allowed to work in communal spaces – which means if you’re in the kitchen making food or whatever you don’t have to worry about being quiet for someone on a Zoom call. We make our own breakfasts and lunches, but always eat dinner together. And everyone has to cook one night of the week. My dad adores cooking, it’s his favourite thing in the world, he starts cooking dinner at like 3pm just for the sake of it (laughs), so he usually does the extra two nights. We’ve played a LOT of Scrabble, a lot of Articulate, we’ve watched a lot of movies … we really are one of those horrifically cheesy families (laughs). Oh, and we’ve been doing quizzes! I fucking love a quiz.

In terms of work, I’ve always been heavily involved in the digital world so the actual scope of my work hasn’t changed dramatically – if anything it’s just ramped up a bit. I decided there’d be more than enough “bad news” about the pandemic; there would always be enough information about how many people were infected and how many people had died … I didn’t want The Twenties Club to be that. It didn’t need to be. So, I decided I was going to try and be a source of lightness. I’m happy to write about things that are the by-product of the pandemic, but I’ve tried to deliver it in a way that doesn’t make people feel more anxious than they already are.

I’m on my phone so much more. I kind of hate it. I’m FaceTime-ing and talking to friends over Instagram and WhatsApp – conversations I would kill to have in person. It feels sort of, I don’t know, ‘icky’ to be on my phone so much, but I’m trying to give myself some grace and just recognise that this is how it has to be right now. I truly believe there is no right or wrong way to do this thing.

For all the ways this pandemic has been really challenging, I feel like it’s also brought out the best in people. I’ve never seen so much humility and grace and such a deep understanding that we’re having a universal experience. While our lives inevitably look different due to privilege or circumstance, we’re all living the same thing.

I think the sense of community that’s been born out of this pandemic, on social media and digital media, is quite profound. Even doing Studio Box in the mornings – it feels like community for me. Yes, it’s on Instagram, but I’m still getting most of the same benefits. Although it’s made me realise how much joy I get from interaction. I didn’t realise how much I love banter! (Laughs) I’ve missed going to Odette’s every Monday morning and having the same conversations with the same staff there; Poi and Masayo and Sheree. I miss those mundane, insignificant conversations that kind of fill you up.

How am I keeping my spirits up? Aside from FaceTime-ing my friends, which has been crucial, I’ve been reading. But, instead of trying to read a million new books, I’ve been re-reading old favourites. Right now, because I’m consuming so much content, I feel quite fatigued by the end of the day. To read something my brain’s already read before is comforting. I’ve always been someone who underlines sentences in books, so it’s been cool to go back and see what I picked out six years ago – to think about what I loved about that sentence and why it resonated with me in that moment.

If there was anything I could’ve done before lockdown … honestly, I wish I’d bought a Thai green chicken curry and a butter chicken and frozen them. I wish I’d bought all the takeaways and frozen them. I would kill for a non-homemade Thai green curry. I don’t know if you wanted to hear something more profound, but that’s the truth.

Do you know who I’ve reignited my love affair with? Stanley Tucci. I love him. He was doing this tutorial on Instagram last week on how to make the perfect Negroni, and he’s got this voice that could melt butter and I was like, ‘God I love you’. So, if I couldn’t do lock down with my friends or family, I think I’d like to be in lockdown with Stanley. Or a hypothetical boyfriend.

Whenever I've felt anxious, it’s been because I’m thinking about what the other side of this is going to be like – It’s when I look too far ahead. I’m trying not to read too much of the news, but it’s hard to ignore that the economy looks dire, and the United States is falling apart under such an incompetent government, and people’s livelihoods are disappearing. But there are positives too. It makes me happy when I think about the break our beautiful planet has had. I’m hoping we’ve made some small gains in terms of climate change, that people reflect back on this time and think, ‘Wow, this is how clean it can be. We can do it. We’ve done it. Now, how can we keep up this momentum?’ On a local level, I feel optimistic that we’re going to stop taking our local communities for granted. Especially those of us who are privileged enough to travel – it’s really easy to jump on a plane and leave New Zealand. I hope we feel incentivised to spend our money locally for as long as we can.

In the future, I’ll tell my kids that this was a hard time. It was hard. It was a time filled with an immense amount of sacrifice. By people far braver than me. But, hopefully, I’ll also be able to tell them that it brought out the best in people. That it served as a gentle reminder that we’re all the same. That our life rafts looked different, but we were all in it together, weathering the same storm.

“I’ve always been someone who underlines sentences in books, so it’s been cool to go back and see what I picked out six years ago.”

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