Because I do go in every day, I know all the attendants and they are universally lovely. But this particular Sunday, there was a woman behind the counter I hadn't seen before. The first thing she did was smile broadly and wish me a booming "Happy Mother's Day".

I thanked her and asked her if she had kids. She did. Two. That's no good having to work on Mother's Day, I said, are you going to be doing something later in the day? No, she said. I can't. My kids are in another country with their grandparents. It's three years since I've seen them. Three years.

Turns out she had been studying in Australia for two years. Her children were due to fly out to visit her. They had their tickets booked, ready to go. And then the pandemic hit, the borders closed. So, yes, three years since she has seen them.

And guess where she is from? Bhutan. A tiny kingdom lauded as a world leader in COVID vaccination. (The country reportedly managed to get almost 94 per cent of its eligible population vaccinated in under two weeks.) The woman did tell me almost all her countrymen had been vaccinated. But we are a small country, she said. (Bhutan has a population just shy of 780,000). And maybe it's also an organised country, I told her.

The lady sent me off with my coffee and a lovely smile. I know Bhutan is meant to be the happiest country in the world, but her stoicism broke my heart. (My son and I slipped back later, with a little bunch of flowers for her.)

My colleague Karen Hardy wrote last week about the things she misses about lockdown. I miss nothing about it. Especially the feeling of living in North Korea and having our movements policed. When the lockdown ended, I relished being back in a crowded shopping centre. To paraphrase Cole Porter: "Oh, give me crowds, lots of crowds under starry skies above. Don't fence me in".

It's easy to be warm and fuzzy about the pandemic when it's hardly hit us in Canberra. I know lots of mums who were happy that the frenzy of after-school activities was put to one side at the height of the pandemic. And with it any sense of guilt because everyone was in the same boat. Little Johnny wasn't missing out by not attending soccer, because no one was. But I got over that real quick. Lockdowns and border closures are cruel, pure and simple. Imagine if we were separated from our children for years by these policies?

There has been a lot of chatter about Australia becoming the new Hermit Kingdom, the heir to North Korea, with Australians likely forbidden from leaving their country until mid-2022. An article by Amelia Lester, an executive editor at Foreign Policy, an Australian living in Washington, sparked it all. She laid bare the hypocrisy behind the border closures. Lester said 40,000 Australians were stranded overseas because they couldn't find a flight or couldn't afford the $3000 per adult returnee to quarantine in a hotel ($2500 per child). But the rich and famous were free to fly in on their private jets and quarantine on their vast country estates. She also delved into the cock-ups around vaccinations in Australia. I don't know if these vaccines are the answer. They may not be mandatory, but, in reality, we're not really being given a choice if we do want to travel. I guess we have to hope and trust. Regardless, my tip for phrase of the year from whatever dictionary is going, is "vaccine hesitancy". The ABC, especially, is loving it right now.