NO RECIPE THIS WEEK, JUST SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT. We crossed a state line last weekend. We went to a library. And a store. These are things we hadn’t done in more than a year. It felt good. And strange.
Let me start by saying we know how lucky we are. We are both able to work from home—we’re quite busy, in fact. We’re in a city where we can get food delivered from some stores, and others have figured out contactless curbside pickup. We have a car.
We also have kids, living in other cities, who have been on us from day one to be careful. “You’re still going to the office?!? You’re still riding the el to work?!?” They have been just as careful as they’ve urged us to be. And now, we’ve had both doses of the vaccine. One daughter has had her first, the other has it scheduled.
So last Saturday morning, we drove to Milwaukee to visit our daughter there. It’s a nothing drive, maybe 90 miles. And normally, it feels that way. But Saturday, we just kept saying, to ourselves and each other, “Are we still in Illinois?”
We got takeout lunch with our daughter and her boyfriend. Not from Hot Head Fried Chicken shown above—that just caught my eye (everything was catching my eye right then). No, we went to Vanguard, a bar and restaurant that specializes in house-made sausages. They also specialize in delicious. We ate lunch—outside in my daughter’s backyard, masking up when not actually eating—but we were together, not on Zoom.
Before heading home, we drove around downtown Milwaukee and the Third Ward—marveling at the beauty of the city, as always, but also marveling at being someplace else.
Besides seeing our kids in person—we haven’t seen our Detroit daughter since a year ago Christmas—another thing we’ve missed dearly is the library. Sunday afternoon, we went to the mothership downtown. Double masked and ready to bail if anything seemed off, we found just the opposite. A machine took our temperatures before a guard let us in. Arrows on the floors directed traffic flow. A librarian did touchless checkout of our books from behind plexiglass. And we now have a stash of books again, selected by us, random discoveries made by pulling books from the shelves.
At this point, we were pretty much off the leash—well, in our cautious way. So we went to Trader Joe’s, at 8 o’clock on Sunday night. Turns out that’s a perfect time to go. The store was gloriously uncrowded and everyone in masks and keeping their distance. And we were in Trader effing Joe’s, filling our cart with the things you can only get there.
I’m sure for many of you, this sounds over-the-top cautious. We have friends flying all over, for work or for fun, going in stores, going to restaurants, just going. But for us, our weekend was small hopeful steps into the new normal. We are officially ready for more.
Congrats on getting both doses of the vaccine! And venturing out into the world again. We’ve had our first dose, will be getting our second in a few weeks. So sometime in April (two weeks after the second dose) we’ll be good to venture out into the world again. It will be weird — almost like visiting a foreign country. 🙂 Milwaukee is a great city — I lived there for a few years in the late 70s — and I haven’t been there for years (last time was in the 90s). Would like to visit again — such a great place to live.
Thanks, John! You are absolutely right about it feeling like a foreign country—everything felt fresh and exotic, but a tiny bit dangerous. All along, we have been going out for walks and local drives, but we are always careful to not be in crowded places or around people not wearing masks. I think those cautions will be with us for a long time to come. Regarding Milwaukee, we have always loved that city, and now that one of our kids lives there and we look at it through the lens of being a place to live, we like it even more.