down the stretch

(NB: most of this post was already in the can on March 27. I just tacked today’s thoughts on the end. As always, life is what happens while you had other plans.)

Giving up alcohol for Lent was pretty straightforward, thanks to Athletic Brewing’s selection of non-alcoholic stouts, browns and porters. That’s always the trick anywhere: finding craft beer that isn’t IPA, hoppy lager or 15% imperial death stout. Besides, it’s not like I really have any occasion to have a drink other than on Sunday pub nights any more.

And that’s another thing: how long until pubs are a thing again? Or bars? We’re just now getting to the point where bars can open for outdoor service again, but when was the last time I was in a bar? Quick drink from the hotel lobby last March? Or in a hotel near Epcot in January 2020? I think there’s a non-zero chance that I haven’t had a quiet pint in a non-hotel establishment outside the house since December 2019. In that time I’ve gotten so acclimated to going up to the office, plugging in the string lights, and putting some pub ambiance video full-screen on the iMac that an imperfect interpretation of the real thing down on Murphy or Castro – with the added inconvenience of other people – might not appeal that much.

This spring feels like a nodal point, when things are going to change in a lot of ways, and that’s not always a good thing. Once you’re pushing 50, change generally means that your options narrow and that things are more likely to be taken from you than given to you. You lower your sights to a small and realistic aspiration and then even those things go missing. I sure as Hell don’t want to go back into the office at this job, but even that might go away despite the fact that we’ve been every bit as productive as we could have been if forced to sit in a windowless basement forty hours a week.

Maybe things will pick up. Maybe we’ll have minor league baseball this year, despite MLB’s determination to kill it. Maybe we’ll get to visit Disneyland before it’s overrun with everyone again. Maybe the vaccines will actually get into enough arms that we can get back to something resembling ordinary life. Maybe we can go to London other than through YouTube.

I did like Sheryl Crow said. I tried to stop getting what I wanted and start wanting what I got. And then they started taking that away a piece at a time. There’s got to be more to come than reconciling yourself to circling the drain gracefully. My father-in-law was still ordering components and looking up Arduino specs on his iPad until the last two weeks of his life. My mother-in-law went to the Rose Parade and the Metropolitan Opera, and enjoyed lunch overlooking the beach two weeks ago, and watched Rachel Maddow assiduously even as she planned for a kidney operation she knew might turn out badly.

The Grim Reaper is undefeated. But instead of climbing on the cart and going quietly, you can make the son of a bitch come and get you. If there’s one lesson for me to take away from this fourteenth month of the pandemic, it’s that.

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