When I retreated from the world in August because Covid was once again out of control in West Virginia I was pretty angry at having to restart all of that bullshit again. But 3 months later, just about everything has changed. I got my vaccine booster 2 weeks ago, and although West Virginians have decided they like still spreading Covid so our rate has suddenly stopped its steady downward progress, I’m back to in-person shopping and in-person church and generally anything that allows me to keep my mask on until I’m back outside.

And along with all of this, my husband has finished his physical therapy for his torn meniscus. He’s walking without pain and has restarted walking on our treadmill. He’s also lost a lot of weight and feels so much better. He celebrated by getting his first barbershop haircut in 2 years. I did learn to clip his hair during the pandemic, but I’m not a professional and he really needed someone to smooth out the rough edges.

I’m still annoyed at the willfully unvaxxed, but I’m done hiding from them. The availability of boosters is a game changer. One of my oldest and dearest friends is in DC this week, and he took the train out to have dinner and stay with us last night. We met in graduate school and had been lucky enough to live close enough to each other to visit regularly. At one point he and his now husband lived in Silver Spring, MD while I was in DC. Even after we’d all moved again, me to WV and them to my dad’s hometown, Scranton, PA, we would visit them when we traveled to CT to visit my family. But their latest move took them far from us and I hadn’t seen him since 2018 when I went to Philadelphia for his father’s funeral. It’s been 10 years since my husband had seen him.

I am always amazed at the seamless nature of long term deep friendships. I am blessed to have a bunch of them; friends of 25, 35, 45 years. These are friendships where when you finally see each other again you immediately pick up where you last left off. These are intimate friendships where deep connections of love maintain the bonds of attachment and you can just be yourself. In other words:  it was a great evening. In a pandemic of small joys, this is a major joy and would be one even without Covid.

The larger world is pretty terrible at the moment so I’m going to keep my focus close to home this week and concentrate on the tangible good things in my day-to-day life, including today being our wedding anniversary. We didn’t meet until we were in our 40s and my life is immeasurably better for having met him. Joy be with you all.

The sing out writes itself: