A spell in the Long Weight Gym

Today is one of Brian and Robbie’s work-out days. 

I can hear them upstairs, exhaling loudly, clunking down weights, urging one another on and congratulating each other when they successfully complete an exercise.

“Workout days” were a genius idea of theirs. Robbie bought a set of weights as a teenager, but for the past seven years they’ve been lying neglected in his childhood room, getting in my way whenever I tidy up for a homecoming (I can’t move the flipping things).

In his normal life, Brian spends much of his time working in Sweden and he used to frequent the hotel gym in the evenings. But he’s lost motivation in recent years and has been grumbling about how unfit he’s becoming.

As it turns out, each of them needed a workout buddy. And now that they’re housebound, what better way to kill time and get fit than to revisit those old weights together?

Robbie’s room becomes the Quarant Inn on a Friday night, as you know, but during the week it becomes the Long Weight Gym.

How fit or strong the two of them become as a result of this lockdown is irrelevant. I can hear them now, chuckling weakly at each other because they’ve overstretched themselves and can’t lift their arms. And they’re bonding.

Brian hates being away from the family and often feels cut off from the rest of us during his Gothenburg weeks. But lockdown is allowing him to spend quality time with his youngest son on a regular basis.

I suspect there are many other older parents out there whose grown-up children have locked down in the family home. They’ve swapped the independence of their own flat for Mum’s cooking, access to a garden and escape from a COVID-19 hotspot.

Some days are tough as we all learn to co-habit in the same space again as adults. But this is something we empty-nesters never imagined– a short reprise of family life long after the kids had left home. And it’s all rather magical.

Being locked down is difficult, stressful, worrying and frustrating. But I suspect we will look back fondly on some of the rare and precious moments that enforced togetherness has brought us.