Gratitude Monday: After

A few weeks ago, I was settling down to an evening of online jigsaw puzzles when I got a text from a colleague. She was in town for a special project but unexpectedly had the evening work-free; did I fancy coming out for a drink?

Did I ever!

There was a bit of a kerfuffle, as I had to get out of my sweats, and then it occurred to me that I prolly didn’t want to show up at a high-end hotel in Crocs, which is all I’ve been wearing for a year, when I wasn’t actually barefoot. So I had to dig out some trainers.

But I made it and we spent a couple of hours just chatting, sat at a table and not across three router hops.

You know—like the Before Times.

I confess that it felt odd, after more than a year of always being separated—by electrons, by plastic barriers, by a lion's length. To chat, to laugh, to look directly into a friend’s face. To hug (we were masked up for that). And to be surrounded (at a distance) by besuited people talking business or other friends just having a gab.

Now that CDC is telling us fully vaccinated that we can begin to congregate carefully, without masks, I’m looking forward to my first breakfast with a friend. Maybe a trip to the nursery to browse plants without my eyeglasses steaming up from the mask in humid weather. To hugs.

And that’s my gratitude for today. It’s not the Before Times—we’ll never have that again. But it’s beginning to be the After Times, and I am so here for that.