The story of our past several months takes us no further than our daily walks around our neighborhood, wearing masks, of course. This gives us a chance to say hello to a neighbor or two, watch the construction progress on two new houses, and notice For Sale signs going up and coming down.
But the highlight of our COVID days at home is our 4:30 ritual. We take a snack out to our deck and for the next hour or so we sit, chat and notice. We note where the sun is hitting our red maple tree, and how fast the clouds are moving. We try to identify bird songs and search our trees to spot our resident cardinal couple and robin family. We watch acrobatic squirrels and the over-populated chipmunks. We have a pet chipmunk, who arrives most days, jumps up onto our stonewall in exactly the same spot and sometimes perches on the head of our stone rabbit, I guess to get a better look around.
Joel and I have worked hard in our garden this year, which we both enjoy. We’ve gotten enormous pleasure monitoring our plants and flowers growing and blooming. I’ve had great fun keeping vases filled with our flowers all around the house.
One more high point has been daily reading on FaceTime with our grandson, Daniel. Seeing this growing, changing child, along with occasional cameos from older siblings Talia and Alex, has been a great joy. We’re grateful for Zoom and FaceTime.
We certainly have missed being able to go to a store, antiquing trips to Maine, or anywhere else. We’ve missed a family wedding and graduation party, get togethers with family and friends, and holiday celebrations. The hardest part is not knowing when things will be back to some kind of normal.
