Now that we’re fully vaccinated, we’ve been slowly easing our toes back into the stream of Socializing With Other People.
It’s been weird! And great! And weird!
Last Friday night, we had a couple over for dinner. They are some of our favorite friends here on the island, and we hadn’t seen them in person in…not quite a year and a half? Something like that? Far too long, at any rate.
We had a fabulous time–drinks and snacks on our deck under the wisteria; I barbecued a tri-tip and Mark harvested lettuce from our very own garden for a salad; our friends brought a scrumptious homemade pie–and they stayed late and we talked and talked and drank lots of wine (well, us ladies did; the men abstained for some reason)–
And, whew, I guess is what I’m trying to say. It was a lot of work! And I don’t mean barbecuing or even washing dishes for four people instead of two. It was…that thing where you’re using a muscle you haven’t used in a long, long time. Both literally and metaphorically: my cheeks hurt from so much laughing and smiling, and my throat was a little hoarse even the next morning, from saying so many words.
But also, just being with people. People we really, really like; people we’d been so very much looking forward to seeing that we made sure to book them for dinner the very next day after their two-weeks-past-second-shot date.
It was weird (and great) for them, too; they’d been even more carefully isolated than we’ve been. While I’ve been walking outside (weather permitting) for much of the pandemic with another friend, one or two times a week, this couple hadn’t even seen family members who live here on the island, except from a distance, waving from the end of the driveway. When they first got here, they stood outside for a while, admiring the garden, eventually admitting, “We’re going to actually go inside…inside your house!…gotta work up to that though…”
I slept late the next morning, my well of social-interaction-desire delightfully full, feeling still tired but quite pleased. For days afterwards, I thought fondly about the evening, our conversations, the pie. It was such a nice thing, to be able to start seeing friends again. Whew! I hope to plan another dinner party soon, in a week or two maybe.
So this is all well and good…or it would be, if we didn’t have to up our game rather quickly, rather soon here. Because (now that everyone’s all vaccinated), Mark and I are planning a road trip next month. We’re going to be gone for ten days…staying with friends and family…visiting with even more people than we’re staying the nights with…people we haven’t seen in a year and a half (or longer, sometimes lots longer). Every. Single. Day…for ten long days…
Yikes.
If I thought I could barely remember how to entertain friends for an evening, I really cannot remember how to go on a whirlwind see-all-the-people-across-three-states road trip. The kind of trip we used to take on the regular; in fact, so often did we travel like this, that eventually I learned to bring work (or “work”) along that I needed to retreat to a quiet room to do, and I’m afraid I was known to say things like I want to just go home and stay home for like a year or more with no visitors or even dinner guests.
(Sorry, everyone, I really didn’t mean to cause a global pandemic with my desperate introvert-ism…)
We leave in just a few weeks. I know the smart thing to do would be to plan a couple more dinner parties, maybe work up to two in a week; also go to other folks’ houses and visit there; maybe even (heaven forfend) try going to a restaurant…
But then my little inner introvert goes Nope! Hoard these last few precious moments of isolation! Go outside and pull weeds–alone!
We’ll see who wins here. I may have to load a lot of books on my e-reader for the trip, so I can withdraw to “work” in a quiet back room somewhere…
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