Quarantine - Day 48

Playbill by Ella St. John

A perfect spring day with lots of sunshine, flower beds abloom, and dandelions taking over the unused park across the street. In the morning, work continued on content briefly until I announced that we were all getting outside and going for a walk. This proposition was not met with much general consensus, but I steadfastly pressed my case. At last, we all emerged blinking into the wash of sunlight on the front steps and, choosing a direction of travel, set off for a walk.

It turns out that the entire city had experienced the same brilliant idea as I did at roughly the same instant. It was going to be nearly impossible to maintain proper social distance in such a crowd. My newly purchased mask that had come all the way from China quickly broke the first time I grinned from ear to ear as it was rather poorly made, and in just a matter of minutes after setting off, we turned back.

Plan B: we set off on a drive with the windows down. We went to Evanston and picked up more books from CARA to deliver to schools and texted the Bradleys to let them know we were driving by their house if they wanted to wave at us. Melissa was out walking her dogs and we missed her. We drove up along the North Shore where everyone was spilling out onto their lawns and the lakefront with bicycles nearly outnumbering cars in places. We looked for an ice cream stand but they were all too populated to stop and maintain distance, so I navigated over to Skokie where I remembered seeing a Culver’s where we could go through a drive thru. As a part-time resident of the State of Minnesota, Abigail loves Culver’s cheese curds and custard, and soon we were once again land sailing with the windows down and the sunroof open eating frozen custard as droves of bikes, motorcycles, scooters, skateboards, and joggers streamed around us. Today would have been the day of the annual Waldorf School May Fair where we would have gathered to watch the children dance around the May Pole. This is the first missed May Fair in many, many years for us, but we made do.

In the evening, Ella and Rosie treated us to a debut performance of their drama:  The Forgotten Child in their backyard theater. The show featured a Playbill, intermission treats, and around five costume changes. It involved an evil flight attendant, a child with telekinetic powers, and a mother that has forgotten she has a child. They plan to develop the script for The Disney Channel. Afterwards, we ate delicious enchiladas prepared by Abbie, wound down our day a bit, and turned in round midnight like Lester Young would have done.