Reflections | Sunday Slow Diary (Belated Tuesday Edition)

The sky above me exploded red, then gold, and for a second I felt guilty for enjoying it. People around me cheered as another firework opened over the cold November evening, smoke drifted through the air, somebody laughed behind me, and I stood there looking up while part of my mind was still somewhere else entirely. Only a few days earlier, I had been staring at a very different kind of sky through photographs from Cebu—grey with rain, heavy with storm, roads disappearing beneath floodwater, families trying to work out what the typhoon had left behind. Now I was in Britain watching people deliberately launch explosives into the air for entertainment. Life, apparently, had no interest in maintaining one emotional theme.

A few days before that, Typhoon Tino had hit Cebu, and the distance between the UK and home suddenly felt much larger than usual. My family was safe, thank God, but other areas were badly affected. Roads disappeared beneath water. Families had to leave homes. People were trying to work out what could still be saved after the flood began to recede. From here, all I could do was follow messages, photographs and updates through a screen, which is a strange kind of helplessness because physically you are still moving through an ordinary day. You go to the shop. You answer messages. You look outside and everything around you appears normal. Meanwhile, part of your brain is thousands of miles away checking whether everyone has electricity, whether the water is rising, who has managed to contact whom and whether the newest post contains useful information or is simply going to increase your blood pressure.

I refreshed updates far too often, which is one of those activities that feels productive while accomplishing almost nothing. Somehow the brain becomes convinced that checking the same page every six minutes counts as personal involvement in emergency response. I sent what help I could, checked on people and prayed. Beyond that, I had to accept the deeply irritating fact that caring about something does not automatically give you control over it.

There was guilt too. That familiar thought that comes with living abroad: I should be there. It is not particularly rational. Nobody in Cebu needed me standing in floodwater making a dramatic entrance as though the typhoon had been waiting for my return. But distance does odd things to belonging. When home is in trouble, every mile between you and the place that made you suddenly feels visible.

The timing made the contrast even stranger because I was on annual leave, which in theory was supposed to mean rest. Proper rest. The sort where you wake without an alarm, drink something hot before it goes cold, read because you want to, and spend at least one afternoon doing absolutely nothing useful. In practice, annual leave revealed a backlog of domestic administration waiting with impressive confidence. There was cleaning, organising, errands, messages, household jobs and several tasks that had apparently decided my week off was their long-awaited moment of glory. I had taken leave from my paid job only to begin an unpaid placement in household management.

So the week already felt scattered before the fireworks even started.

Then came Guy Fawkes Night. The cold bit properly that evening, the kind that finds its way into your fingers no matter how optimistic you were about gloves. People stood bundled in coats, faces tilted upwards, waiting for the next burst of colour. Then the sky opened again—red, gold, white, sparks falling briefly before disappearing into smoke. Everyone around me laughed and reacted in that easy way people do when they are not mentally comparing one sky with another. I was. A few days earlier I had been looking at storm damage back home, and now I was watching a celebration built around fire and noise. The contrast felt almost rude, and yet I enjoyed it. That surprised me.

For a while, I think I had absorbed the idea that if something serious was happening somewhere I loved, then enjoying myself elsewhere was somehow inappropriate. As though concern required constant solemnity. As though worry became more sincere if I refused to laugh. As though loving home could be measured by how miserable I managed to remain from thousands of miles away. But worry does not become more useful because you punish yourself with it. I could care deeply about Cebu and still laugh beneath fireworks in Britain. Both things were true. Neither cancelled the other. Perhaps this was simply what adulthood sometimes looked like: worrying about one part of the world while laughing in another, with neither feeling waiting politely for the other to finish.

The week seemed determined to prove that point because only a few days later, the emotional theme changed again. I visited a friend who had just given birth to a baby girl. She was tiny, pink, beautifully wrapped and completely unaware that several adults had reorganised their voices around her existence. Newborn babies have extraordinary authority for people who cannot yet hold up their own heads. Everyone lowers their volume. People who normally speak perfectly well suddenly whisper. Somebody sneezes and immediately looks guilty. We stare at a sleeping baby and discuss how peaceful she looks while politely ignoring the fact that her parents may not have slept properly since Tuesday.

Holding her was lovely, not because I suddenly developed a grand theory about humanity continuing itself, but because babies are such small reminders that the world keeps beginning things. Somewhere, people are dealing with loss. Somewhere else, somebody is meeting their daughter for the first time. Life does not wait until one chapter has been processed properly before opening another. The typhoon had reminded me how quickly normal life can be interrupted. The baby reminded me that normal life also keeps being created.

Then came a christening over the weekend, because apparently the week had decided subtlety was unnecessary. Another baby, another gathering and another occasion where everyone attempted to behave respectfully while also taking approximately four hundred photographs. The baby wore white, family gathered around, prayers were said and everybody behaved beautifully for the important parts before eventually returning to the equally sacred question of when the food would be served. I like christenings for that reason. They manage to hold faith, family and buffet logistics in the same room. Watching the ceremony made me think about how many significant moments in life involve people gathering around someone and saying, in one form or another, you belong with us. Birthdays, baptisms, weddings, funerals and reunions all seem to require us to turn up for one another. Sometimes with flowers, sometimes with prayers, and usually with food, especially when Filipinos are involved.

By the time Tuesday arrived and I finally sat down to write what had been intended as a Sunday Slow Diary, the whole week felt like several separate stories wearing one trench coat. There had been a typhoon in Cebu, fireworks in Britain, a newborn baby, a christening, annual-leave chores, family messages, errands, prayers, relief, worry and enough emotional variation to qualify as an anthology. Perhaps that is a more accurate version of adult life than the neat one we often try to write afterwards. It is rarely perfect balance or one difficulty finishing neatly before something joyful begins. Everything overlaps. You can be worried about family while choosing an outfit for a christening. You can pray for people dealing with floods and laugh at fireworks later that evening. You can hold a newborn and still remember there is laundry waiting when you get home. You can feel grateful and guilty, relieved and tired, homesick and happy, sometimes within the same hour. Life does not organise itself according to genre.

I used to think a week needed a clear lesson before it was worth writing about. Something polished, something conclusive, preferably one sentence near the end that made the previous seven days sound as though they had been carefully arranged for personal development. This week refused. There was no neat sequence. The typhoon did not exist to teach me gratitude. The fireworks did not exist to teach me joy. The babies did not appear simply to complete a metaphor. They were things that happened close together, and I happened to be standing in the middle of them trying to hold the feelings without forcing them into a tidy shape. Perhaps that was enough.

The week was simply full: full of worry, full of relief, full of people, full of faith and full of practical things that remained stubbornly practical despite everything else happening around them. It reminded me that the same world can contain disaster, celebration, birth, exhaustion, prayer and an overdue load of washing without considering any of this contradictory. Annual leave certainly did not transform me into a rested woman with a perfectly organised house and a repaired relationship with time. I would like that noted clearly. I returned from it with some errands completed, other errands mysteriously created, a collection of new photographs and the realisation that rest occasionally means doing different things rather than doing nothing at all.

Still, there were good things inside the mess. My family was safe. I could help from far away. I stood beneath fireworks with friends. I held a new baby. I watched another child welcomed into faith and family. I prayed. I laughed. I cleaned a few things I had successfully ignored for longer than I care to admit. The cupboards may be the least poetic part of this entry, but they worked very hard to be included. So the Sunday Slow Diary arrived on Tuesday, and honestly, that felt appropriate. Nothing else had obeyed the timetable either. Storms did not wait. Babies certainly did not consult my calendar. Annual leave ignored the job description. Sunday made no commitment whatsoever to produce writing on schedule. The whole week simply kept changing the subject.

When I think back to the fireworks now, I remember standing beneath that cold British sky with Cebu still occupying part of my mind. I had wanted to know which feeling was appropriate, which version of the week deserved more space and which sky I was supposed to be looking at: the storm-dark one back home, the one exploding gold above me, the one beneath which a newborn had just entered the world, or the one above a church where another child was being welcomed into family and faith. I understand now that I did not have to choose. A life can contain more than one sky at a time.

I could grieve what had been damaged and still notice what was beautiful. I could worry and laugh. I could pray and celebrate. I could miss home while continuing to live the life in front of me. None of that made the concern less real; it simply made the week human. Maybe that is why I could not decide which sky to look at. They were never asking me to choose between them. They all belonged to the same life, and for one complicated November week, so did I.

Apparently, the heart has room for several forecasts,
Anj 🖤

Song for this entry: “Fix You” by Coldplay — for all the moments when the light goes out, and we remember that even in the dark, someone somewhere is still praying for dawn.