Mondays with Mike: Actual reality beats the daylights out of virtual Reality

As blog readers know from last Monday’s post, last week was not a happy one for me.

Emotional dips happen to everyone I know from time to time. In these circumstances, the dips are deeper. Lots of us get miserable now and then, but to quote an old saw, misery loves company.

Beats hell out of misery alone.

We had a lovely Labor Day weekend here in Chicago, where we had two perfect days wrapped around a rainy one.

We did our thing with neighborhood friends where we bring down camp chairs to our little park below our apartment window and have a distanced pot luck. These friends are ones we’d be picnicking with at Summer Dance—which ain’t happening this year. Among them are what I’d call professional urban picknickers—they have some major equipment that includes a portable serving table and coolers. And…elegant battery-powered candles.

The food was fantastic, the company better.

Sunday we heard some scrumptious music at Jazz Showcase. This was courtesy of our local friends Al and Donna. They buy tickets for every weekend show (whether or not they can attend) to support the Jazz Showcase.

They gave us their tickets because they could not attend. The Showcase doesn’t serve food, so it can’t serve alcohol under the current limit. But it fights on, serving music from Thursday to Sunday each week, encouraging attendees to order non-alcoholic drinks and bring food they’ve ordered to-go from local restaurants. And folks are distanced.

Today Beth and I Zipcarred to the north suburbs for a distanced cookout on our suburban friends’ lovely deck. Labor Day was busy for Zipcar—we had to walk farther than usual to get ours. But Luna loved the walk.

When we arrived, we walked around the side of the house to our friends’ deck. They’d set two tables, one for them, one for us, separated by a safe but still close-enough distance to have a good conversation. We’d not seen each other since you-know-what started. We had a lot of catching up to do, and it was delightful doing it. The grilled salmon and scallops, veggies and salad weren’t bad, either.

One of our hosts hadn’t been with her mother, who lives in an assisted living facility, until two weeks ago. (They’d done the through-the-window thing.)

We told her and her husband that with luck, we’d see our son Gus this coming Saturday. I say “luck,” because we had to submit a request that must still be approved, and the weather has to comply—we can see him on the backyard deck only. But we’re hopeful. We’ve Zoomed with him and staff, and it helps. But it ain’t the same. Let’s hope we never reach the point where we think it does.

Because this weekend reminded me of the power of being at the same place, at the same time, with people you love.