Remembrance of holidays past/thoughts of holidays present

Not that, as a completely non-religious (irreligious) person, Easter itself doesn't have a ton of meaning for me. Still, my equally non-religious (irreligious) family has continued to celebrate it with a get together, even though my fervently religious (super-Catholic) mother has been dead now for nearly 20 years. Our get together is at my sister Trish's, where we eat ham, potatoes, veggies, cole slaw, pineapple raisin sauce, and carrot or Jack Horner spice cake. And drink copious amounts of wine. The appetizers at Trish's always include jelly beans and other Easter-baskety treats, and everyone who wants to bite the head off of a Peep gets to do so.

Not this year.

On Saturday, I celebrated Easter with my brother Rick, the only person I see up close and personal these days, as he is also single and lives alone, and we're limiting our exposure and disease vectors by not socializing with anyone else. I did have a virtual cup of tea with an old friend on Zoom the other day, but that doesn't count. And Rick got together with one of his buddies, sitting 15 feet away in lawn chairs in Bob's back yard, having a couple of beers. (Rick got to pee in the bushes before he left, Bob's wife having figured that if she wasn't letting her kids and grandkids into the house, she sure as hell wasn't going to let my brother use the bathroom!)

For the occasion, I ordered a catered tenderloin dinner, which was way pricey and absolutely magnificent. I never cook steak, but I like it on occasion. And this was an occasion. After dinner, we Zoomed with Rick's daughter Caroline for a bit.

Yesterday, I had left over tenderloin dinner, and a drive-by, keep your distance visit from my sister Trish and her daughter Molly. Trish delivered some left overs (won't need to fake cook for a couple more days!) and a couple of home made masks -  one using fabric from a polished cotton summer jumper my mother made for me in the late 1960's: cream colored, decorated with butterflies. The jumper was handed down to Trish at some point, so we both have a sentimental attachment to the fabric. Trish was saving all sorts of fabric swatches for a quilt she's planning on making some day. (I told her to make sure she still sets some of the memory lane fabric aside so that I can wrap the novel I'm going to write someday in it.)

The two lovely masks Trish made should hold me until some of the many different masks I ordered from Etsy start showing up, which I'm hopeful will be this week. All those handcrafters on Etsy are overwhelmed with the demand, so items that were supposedly shipping out over a week ago are languishly somewhere in the work-in-progress pipeline. Probably on the cutting room table.

Trish's mask works a ton better than the one I cobbled together using a dinner napkin and rubber bands, which was way too heavy and kept slipping off.

Yesterday, the weather was lovely - very Eastery - although, as history tells us, Easter can be anything from springy and balmly to last gasp of winter blizzard conditions. I took a long walk along the Esplanade, which runs along the Charles River. It was relatively crowded, but not crazily so. I will observe that about 75-80% of the walkers had on masks - up from maybe one quarter a week ago. And that 99% of runners and bicyclists are still going without. I guess they need the freedom to hock a loogie without the impediment of a having a fabric covering across their face.

The weather was lovely, as are the spring flowering trees. We usually have forsythia out by this point - and they are glorious - but the magnolias and cherry trees don't generally pop until later in the month or in early May. Nice to have, if it weren't for the ominous aspect that their early appearance is likely due to global warming. Sigh...

On my walk, I passed by the Hatch Shell, where the Boston Pops performs their 4th of July Concert. I used to go back in the day when you could show up five minutes before hand, throw down your blanket and enjoy the concert and fireworks. Then it became a thing, with half-a-million people jamming their way in. No thanks. I did go a couple of years ago to the July 3rd dress rehearsal, and that was enough of a hassle. In the wake of the 2013 Patriots Day bombing, the security was insane. Is it just me, or do soldiers carrying automatic weapons take away some of the enjoyment of an event? So, generally I put the concert on TV and watch the fireworks out my window. Or I go up to my sister's in Salem and watch their lower key but excellent concert and fireworks her town puts on. Last year, I wasn't in an especially patriotic mood. Nor was Trish. So we both just sheltered in place, although I did look out the kitchen window at the Boston fireworks.

No concert in either location this year, I'm afraid.

As for Patriots Day, that's coming up next Monday.

I walked by the finish line of the Boston Marathon the other day. Normally, that area would be buzzing this week: the finish line repainted, the stands and barricades erected, bright yellow daffodils in pots covered in blue foil - Marathon colors - everywhere. Not this year. The race is now rescheduled for September. We'll see about that.

Throughout the week, the city would start to fill with runners, recognizable because they're all walking around in their Marathon jackets. Each year, the jacket is a different color. This year the color scheme is red, white and blue. (The year it was teal, I had the coincidental misfortune to order a little jacket from LL Bean in what turned out to be the exact same color as the Marathon jacket for the year. Once I started seeing the runners touring around in their jackets, I was a bit embarrassed to be sporting mine. I could see people side eying me, That woman's a marathoner???)

As for the Patriots Day Red Sox game - my favorite game of the year and, yes, I did have tickets - that won't be happening. I know that baseball is talking about some weird limited season in which all the teams play to empty stadiums in Florida and Arizona (where there are a lot of ballparks because those states are spring training locations). But I'll believe it when I see it. And it's hard to imagine anything more depressing than watching a ballgame when there are zero fans in the stands.

This Patriots Day won't be as awful as the sorrowful 2013 Patriots Day. But it will be right up there.

I'm afraid there won't be so many jolly holidays until the COVID-19 pandemic is quelled. Let's hope we get some relief soon. I really don't want to "celebrate" Thanksgiving and Christmas while sheltering in place with my butterfly mask on...