We have started going back to restaurants, to bars, to old man pubs. On some days, this feels right and true; on others, dubious and maybe not defensible. And so the awkward compromise, the magical thinking: Go only when it’s quiet. Sit near doorways and windows or, increasingly, outside. Wear your mask to the bathroom and back.
On Friday, after a hard week, we decide to return to a favorite wine bar that we hadn’t sat inside of for years. It is at first like slipping into a newly drawn bath that is fractionally too hot or too cold, relief shaded with discomfort. But my body’s memory is long, and it knows the rhythms: elbows here, swirl the riesling, sink back, pick between the tart strawberries and white asparagus sheathed in lardo, talk about how the riesling also smells like strawberries and cream and the first day of summer. Feel the stiffness of anxiety puddle into candle wax. It will harden later, but for now all is warmth and buoyancy.
I can’t believe what I was once used to. Now I know—as the candles flicker and as the night deepens and as we order more glasses, of chablis and a cabernet franc that tastes like new leaves and twigs—to hold onto these moments like the semi-precious stones that they are, warming in my pocket. The patina of complacency has been scrubbed off, maybe forever, and I know that wealth is fleeting. But I am happy with these small treasures and the way that they jingle as I walk.
Words + Photoby Claire Bullen