Yesterday afternoon we joined an extended family Zoom call, in which people were talking about what they've been up to, and afterward I was keenly aware of how many things we have not been doing. "I want to go to a restaurant," I said a little mournfully. "I want to look at a menu and share an appetizer and think about the specials and have someone wash my dishes without my having to ask."
"We can make that happen!" said Pete.
I thought he meant, "You can stop living such a narrow life and go to a dang restaurant," but what he actually meant was "We can bring a restaurant to you!"
He and Stella put their heads together and created a menu. I heard them in the kitchen: "What does Mom especially like to eat?"
Not long afterward they seated me at the dining room table. Stella was the waitress; Pete was the chef. The menu had an appetizer section, from which I requested the hummus with toasted pita. They brought me a pretty little plate: perfectly toasted triangles of pita, a dollop of hummus, a little glass dish of nice olives. To drink I had a glass of seltzer over ice with a splash of real lemonade.
The menu offered me a number of entrée options; I chose pizza bread with quartered artichoke hearts. Pete washed every dish afterward.
You guys, I felt so loved.
The COVID situation here has been so bad lately. Our official case count, which is surely only a fraction of the actual cases in town, just kept vaulting upwards over the top of the y axis. Our case record had stood since November of 2020, but earlier this month the official tally spiked up to almost four times that previous record. Cases, positivity, hospitalizations-- you name it, we were setting new records just about every day. The hospitals were overflowing.
So we've been living a pretty quiet life over here. We're back to online church with drive-through communion; we're wearing KN95 masks everywhere we go. I suppose it makes sense that if an extraordinarily contagious virus is unleashed in a county that's only moderately vaccinated, there's going to be a lot of viral replication happening. But watching it unfold was still astonishing.
We seem to have turned a corner; cases and positivity are down. Overall hospitalizations are still high, though our local public radio station reports that we have more available ICU beds in part because of a series of ICU deaths. It all feels pretty grim, and I think I will hold off on flipping through any menus in person for a while longer.
But at dinner tonight I told the kids again how much I appreciated their willingness to make my wish happen. And this is the best part of all: Pete sighed happily at the memory, and said, "That was so fun!"
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