It was a conversation with his wife over ham and cheese toasties that kicked off Australian writer Trent Dalton's newspaper column about the power of the human spirit in these difficult times.
Trent Dalton Photo: supplied / Russell Shakespeare
"My wife saw a burn mark that i got on my arm the day before while cooking pancakes for the kids and she got all cross with me … and said 'it looks infected'... 'You can't go to hospital right now, I'd be so angry with you.'
Then she said something he'd never heard her say in the 20 years they've been together.
"'I need you. I need you here,' she said. And I knew in that moment she really cared for me, and that was beautiful."
Trent first wrote about his own 'bunker' in The Weekend Australian Magazine, then asked for others to talk about what they're experiencing in isolation and how they're getting through it.
The stories sent in for Tales From the Bunker have been really beautiful, Trent says.
"People are thinking a lot about their past and a lot about their lives and the things they haven't done. It's just a very, very interesting time for all of us.
"All of those best-laid plans, the universe just came and laughed at us. And it showed us how privileged and how lucky we have been.. I sit here in this beautiful suburb of Brisbane and life's pretty darn good and it has been for a long time."
The Boy Swallows Universe author describes himself as an overthinker and says he's recently been waking in the night, haunted by a particular television news story.
"It showed this Indonesian man and he was literally squirming on a road and hundreds of people were going past. And they couldn't him because he was coughing his guts up, this poor guy. He obviously had Covid-19 and it was obvious to everyone passing him but they couldn't do anything. That is my guy. That is my go-to Covid vision. I just wake up and I think of that guy. That makes me think of mum an hour away, and my brother across the [Queensland] border and then I think about my own kids. I'm just thinking too much, way too much."
All Our Shimmering Skies - Trent Dalton's keenly awaited follow-up to Boy Swallows Universe - was due out this June, but its release has now been pushed back to September.
