Painting the town

My niece who lives in Orlando is in town visiting her sister in Brooklyn, and my nephew from Virginia decided to take the bus north for the weekend to join them in painting the town. These three grew up together in the D.C. area, before my nieces' family moved south to Orlando a few years ago. I didn't assume they would come and visit their aunt and uncle in Harlem, because Brooklyn can feel like the other side of the world when you're on those teeming streets living the hipster life, but they made the trip to see us anyway, and it was wonderful to be able to hug them all. 

They had been to a farmers' market and a thrift store in the morning, then lunch on a Vietnam era warship now docked on the Hudson River, its decks converted to an open air restaurant. In the photo of my nephew, he's showing me some African bead bracelets he bought from a street vendor, and I thought again this gifted musician is so much a seventies soul. When they left us a couple of hours later, they were on their way to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to be followed that evening by a group hang out at a Brooklyn bar called Cellar Dog, featuring live jazz and pool tables. These adventurous young people make me realize I've forgotten how to wander the city and explore! Hard to believe I was them, once.

Meanwhile my girl is in Miami Beach with the bride squad painting that town, too. Here's a photo she texted me. The bride-to-be is in white, and the others will be her attendants in their champagne colored gowns on her special day. My daughter's PCR covid test was negative by the way, and so was her sweetheart's, so all summer plans are proceeding apace. Every time I or her boyfriend's mother or one of her aunts cautions her to be safe while traveling cross country next week, she says to me under her breath, "Why do you all think I'm an idiot and that I want to die?" I trust therefore that she and her friend will take all precautions and continue to be covid free.

I did hear news of the son of a friend in Florida who was fully vaccinated, who in July came down with a knarly case of covid, chills, fever, body aches, the whole nine. "I am so glad I got the vaccine," he told his mother, "because I can't imagine this being any worse." My cousin in Orlando also told me of some friends of hers, whose kids went to camp for the summer and returned home hale and hearty, only to have their mother and grandmother, both vaccinated, come down with cases of covid that were like a bad flu, and their father and his sister, both unvaccinated, get absolutely slammed with the disease. The father is now recovering but the aunt is still in the hospital in a bad way. The father has become resolved that as soon as he can he will get the vaccine, and everyone is praying for his sister. When the two camp kids were tested, both turned out to be positive for covid though the boy, 6, had only had a mild cold and the girl, 8, hadn't been sick for a day. Yet unknowingly, they spread it to everyone else in the household. 

I fear we are heading back into the void, and that so-called breakthrough infections are being sorely undercounted, as none of the vaccinated people mentioned here who became ill reported their cases to any authority. Imagine the uncounted more breakthrough infections whose hosts experience little more than a case of the sniffles, but who can nevertheless spread the virus. The man and I have already cancelled possible trips to Europe and Jamaica this fall, and we may yet have to cancel the bookings we made for a beach vacation in Belize in December. We had a month or two post vaccinations of feeling as if we were emerging from the era of covid but in fact, we are still in the thick of it, and that brief respite was nothing more than the eye of a still swirling storm. 

I didn't hang that framed puzzle over the couch after all. I have this aversion to making holes in walls, and I couldn't figure out how to safely hang the weight of the picture without using a hammer and nails. So for now it's propped up in our bedroom, next to my desk, and I rather like walking in and seeing it there.