For Julia’s birthday, we were ultra careful.  No eating out, no movie theater, no concert, no activities where we would be with many people for too long a time in close quarters. Sometime during last week, possibly in the days after the cello break, I grew very weary of the ultra careful life.  

And so, on Saturday, Julia, Cheshire, Justin and I went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner.  It was delicious and as Cheshire commented, it was food that would have made awful take out. Julia had asked earlier in the day if she could have an alcoholic drink with dinner. She has never before asked for such a thing, didn’t even ask about it for her birthday, but she is 21 and I would rather have her experiment with us than on her own.  And considering that she does not go anywhere on her own right now, it would be some undisclosed time in the distant future before she could order her first drink.  

And so, she decided on a margarita, I asked the waiter to make it very light and he suggested that they make her a very light strawberry margarita. He asked for and we showed him her “proof” and he brought the drinks to the table. It was quite pretty and Julia was thrilled.  Both our drinks—I had a regular margarita—had fruit in the bottom of the glass and salt on the rim.  Julia definitely didn’t like the salt and only sort of liked the drink. She was very pleased with herself for daring to drink most of her drink but it definitely wasn’t the best thing in the world.  And I, in fierce mother mode, breathed a small sigh of relief.

The dinner was lovely, lovely to be served, lovely to have some food I didn’t have to think about, lovely to have some very tasty food and lovely to relax into a somewhat noisy public place.  Servers all wore masks and the rest of us wore them on the way in and out and to the rest rooms.  

Afterwards, we ran across a street to the movie theater to see the new Spider-Man: No Way Home which I enjoyed much more than I expected.  This movie theater had the misfortune to open last winter was not crowded, as it has not been during the last year during our two other visits. The movie was close to philosophic about parallel universes or multiverses.  I have no idea if those ideas were played with in other Batman movies but for this one, they managed to have three Spidermen (mans?)—Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland—together in a story that showed off the deep character of this superhero with the older versions of the hero coaching the younger.

Yeah, I liked it.  And there was enough blood and guts and collateral damage (I do hate collateral damage!) for any 14 year old boy.

And there was more to the weekend!  On Sunday, after zoom church, we went to Boston Symphony Hall to hear the Me2 Orchestra, the only classical music organization for musicians living with mental illness and the people who support them. Julia’s cello teacher was playing and thought that it would not be crowded.  It was more crowded that I imagined and although the audience was not sitting in every seat, social distancing was just a hope.  

Still, the music was wonderful and to hear music in person in a beautiful hall for the first time in years was confection.  They played Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ from Enigma Variations which is one of my favorite classical and I was in heaven. 

One more mid-winter celebration—Lunar New Year—on our agenda and that begins next week at the tail end of January.  I think we will cook—Julia is interested in the cooking–and not engage in more risky behavior.

Still, almost instinctively, I woke up today and counted the days since we were barefaced in a restaurant and too close to everyone at the concert.  Today is Wednesday, so three days.  The CDC still estimates incubation time as between 2 and 14 days with a median of 5 days.  Most folks I know who were taken down by Omicron seem to have a shorter incubation time.  Is it weird to wake up counting? Or it is just this time, and the way I have adapted and changed? 

Another trip around the sun and now another 11 days to before I feel safe again.