D-Day + 53: And what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious confinement?

May has brought brighter days and flowers blooming in abundance.  She is a tease, though:  she gives us just enough sunshine and warmth to remind us of a promise of better days, but then she still turns cloudy and blustery at times.  Ah well.  We will be complaining about the heat soon enough.

With the longer and sunnier days, we are spending more and more time out of doors, and that gives us reason to appreciate the #TogetherApart movement.  What is it that you plan to take with you from your one wild and precious confinement into the New Normal? 

Hopefully we will remember the chalk art everywhere we look.  On sidewalks, and sometimes, on streets that are not so heavily traveled.

We will definitely not forget the local art show that our neighbor Eric put together a week ago.  Eric and his wife, together with her parents, own an interior design business and store.  They have been shut down pretty much completely since the beginning of the shelter-in-place order here in Denver.  We see Eric frequently out in their front yard with their cuter-than-a-bug’s-ear 5-year old son, and we stop to chat with them (from a proper social distance, natch) whenever we head out for a walk.  Several weeks ago, Eric told us that he had posted a query on the Nextdoor app: “who creates cool things?”  He was expecting to get a few hits, but instead, got several hundred responses.  Within hours, he created the plan to hold a street art fair that he called “Covid Creations”.

Covid Creations was held last Wednesday on the block just down the street.  There were somewhere around 50 entries, all spaced at 6-foot intervals.  (The original idea was to have it be a drive-by exhibition, but that just didn’t pan out.)  Eric set it up as a competition, with just a few rules.  The work of art had to be created during the Covid-19 quarantine, and it had to be uplifting.  He asked that nobody spend more than $200 on materials. 

Mother Nature cooperated and brought us a gorgeous day for the art show.  Eric and the business donated prizes for the first through third place winners:  gift cards for local restaurants, a win-win all around, and very gracious to come from someone whose business has been deeply affected.  Our friend Rick came out to provide some music in the early part of the day.  The creations were displayed from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., and there was a steady stream of people throughout the day, almost all wearing masks and safely distancing.  Local TV stations came out to cover the event:

(Blogger appears to be having difficulties just now with uploaded videos, so if this does not play, google "Covid Creations Denver" and you'll get hits on YouTube for this or similar news reports.)

These are the things I want to remember about our Coronavirus days.

There’s also the neighbor who arranged a social-distancing happy hour on their front lawn last Friday.  We all brought our own lawn chairs or blankets, and arranged ourselves in our family bubbles, all 6 or more feet apart.  Lara, the host, offered to refill my wine glass.  She took it from me, went inside, returned with a most generous pour – and a package of disinfectant wipes so that I could wipe down the glass.

We were sitting on the lawn when, at 8 p.m., the howl began.  Do you do this in your neighborhood?  In Denver, every night at 8 p.m., we have a howl to show appreciation for the people working the front lines of the disease.  At first, some people were posting on Nextdoor and Facebook, complaining that the howling came when their young children were already in bed, and it was disturbing their sleep.  But on Friday night, nobody was complaining.  We all howled and howled.  Eric and Gina said that their 5-year old son loves the howl so much that they set an alarm every day so they won’t miss it.  It continues to surprise me how the howl happens every single day and seems to be getting even more exuberant as time goes on.

That’s something worth remembering.

There’s also the chalkboard on the local bike path, with a reminder to help take care of others:

We hear reports of clearer air all over the world.  We don’t see it directly here from central Denver, but our friends who have a clearer view of the front range tell us that the brown cloud – something that was largely eradicated before Trump’s policies messed that all up – has diminished again.  We love that there are fewer cars on the road, and we can walk down the middle of many of our residential streets in order to keep our distance from others.  (Fewer cars, but crazier drivers, driving at break-neck speeds?  That’s what Ed, who is out more than I am, reports.  I’m not sure what’s up with that.)

There’s the fact of masks becoming the norm.  The first time I wore a mask, I walked into our local Italian eatery to pick up our carryout order.  “I feel like a bank robber!” I said to the waiter as he handed us our package.  “Please don’t rob us!”, he said, and I felt a bit of desperation in his voice.  Just one more blow that the restaurant shouldn’t have to worry about.  I’ve made no more bank robber jokes since then.  But the mask has become the new norm, barely worth mentioning.  Except this:  when I went to pick up an order for CBD lotion from a local dispensary the other day, the young woman who brought my order outside said, “I love your mask!”  Now that’s a phrase I don’t think I ever expected to hear in my life, but there you have it.

This morning, Ed came into my office to tell me that our stimulus check had been deposited into our joint bank account.  He said, “we need to figure out what to do with it”.  This made me think of our former neighbor and good friend Raffi, who stopped by a few weeks ago while he was out for a run.  We saw him approaching the house and went out to greet him – from a social distance, of course – on our front porch.  We spent some time catching up, then Raffi said, “we got our stimulus check, so I just finished writing $2,400 worth of checks to charities I support”. 

These are the things I want to remember when we are settled into our New Normal at some point in the future.  The generosity and humanity of our neighbors.  The fact that we are talking more often with distant friends and family, staying in touch, making sure everyone is still healthy and safe.  The signs in windows of homes, thanking the medical folks on the front lines.  The people who step off the sidewalk to give way so we pass at a safe distance.  The nieces who call randomly, just to chat.  The sisters and brothers who do the same.

Keep doing all of that, okay?  And have a brilliant, joyful time on this glorious spring day.