Like the toothache that doesn’t hurt when you get to the dentist we have been stymied to discover if the repairs to our gutters and leaders have been effective.
It’s rained only once since we had the new rainfall channels installed 10 days ago. To be sure, the rain Wednesday night was intense. But we weren’t home to observe how the gutters and leaders performed. We had chosen that night to socially distance a dinner visit with friends.
It sprinkled Friday morning, not enough to even dampen the newspaper thrown onto the driveway. The longterm forecast for the next 10 days suggests sunshine except a 40% chance of rain next Tuesday and the following Monday.
In pre quarantine days we would exult in weather that fit our desire for outdoor activity. But those options are severely limited these days. No Garden Conservancy tours. No trips to the beach. Or to a friend’s pool. No outdoor festivals. Or flea markets.
With temperatures hovering near and above 90 degrees with a dew point index an uncomfortable 60-plus, walking extensively outdoors, even on a shaded trail, is out of the question.
Confinement is not how Gilda and I anticipated spending this year. Scratched already have been trips to Washington with Shalom Yisrael guests, to Omaha to see our daughter’s family, to Colorado for a first cousins get together, to Massachusetts to see our son’s family, to Switzerland for a car tour with my brother and his wife, to Maryland for their oldest grandchild’s bat mitzvah, to Portugal for a bus tour.
On the local level we’ve missed out on plays from our subscriptions to Playwrights Horizons and Second Stage, countless dinner parties with friends at our home or theirs, hosting the Passover seder, and attendance at synagogue services and programs.
Zoom cannot replace those experiences.
There’s a special heart rending poignancy to crossing those activities out of my paper calendar that cannot be matched by deleting them from an electronic calendar on my iPhone.
I know. My fatigue and disappointment with coronavirus life is no more extreme than what many or all of you have gone through. No one in my immediate and extended family has been infected.
At least I have this public blog to express my feelings. And for a change I am not ranting about Donald Trump.
Stay healthy. And pray for rain, enough to test our gutters and leaders. But no flooding.
