I read an article recently about the importance of having things to look forward to. One of the challenges of 2020 is how many ordinary—and out-of-the-ordinary—experiences the pandemic has robbed us of. There are no weddings. No baby showers. No one was packing their trunk for summer camp or their duffel bag for a weekend trip upstate to play tennis and go canoeing. August didn’t bring trips to Target for kids, flip-flops slapping on the hot asphalt of the parking lot before entering the cool store and piling colorful binders and file folders and packages of neon-hued markers in a shopping cart.
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I’m sitting outside watching a cardinal flit about the garden, perching on the top of wire trellis that supports the cherry tomato vines. It’s breezy and cool out today, but the sun is shining and I’m barefoot in a t-shirt. The morning is quiet—I can hear far-off voices now and again, and an insistent cheep of birdsong high above me. I left the heavy sliding glass door open to allow fresh air through the screen, and I can hear the gentle ping and clank of the washing machine and the quiet whooshing of the white noise machine coming through the baby monitor from the nursery upstairs.
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And just like that we’ve turned the corner into fall. Technically it’s still summer, and I suspect that there will be a handful of hot and humid days ahead, but there’s an indefinable shift in the air.
There’s a hint of crispness hiding behind the heat and sunshine. Images begin to collect and shimmer at the back of my mind, not entirely formed yet, but there nonetheless: freshly-sharpened pencils and backpacks and flannel shirts and steaming mugs of coffee and the cinnamon-y scent of warm apple cider.
Read moreSOUR CREAM BANANA BREAD
Remember small talk with strangers? Cocktail parties and the attendant chit-chat you’d make as you sipped a glass of Chardonnay in someone’s living room, or nursed a too-strong gin and tonic amidst a group of friends at a bar? Dinner parties where you politely conversed with the people on either side, finding out that the man to your left is an accountant who builds wooden canoes in his spare time and that the woman to your right only likes to humble brag about her three children?
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I tap open the weather app and see a bold red “flood warning” above the day’s hourly forecast. It’s not yet 7 AM—an hour at which the day usually hasn’t declared itself, weather-wise. I step outside into a cloudy, opaque world: fog and mist obscure the street, making the houses and trees and cars appear pale and shadowy.
(I realize I talk a lot about the weather here. Either I should consider a career as an amateur meteorologist, or it’s a reflection of the fact that when you live at the beach (and anywhere really), a sunny day versus a rainy one greatly colors your daily experience. Anyway. Roll with it, okay?)
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