After a virus has passed, and, daylight savings has begun, at least there is well being to accept it.
After an achy-empty-sneezy prone existence for days, to be able to dress up and go out to eat Italian food with new friends on Halloween and not wish you were lying down on the floor with your table napkin over your face, but instead enjoying talk about mutual experiences in the Ukraine, is life, life, life once again.
Across the table I notice the young, soft apricot skin of the woman’s face, her warm eyes, her vulnerable throat, which pulses as she talks of a gluten allergy she has had since birth, and how she has had to adapt her life around it. Looking down at her plate, she winces. Immediately, her husband reaches over and switches her food for his. They don’t seem terribly unhappy eating each others meal. So, I think, they’ve been married a while.
Back at their loft apartment, we are given a tour. A cultured environment–modern décor, cherry wood kitchen cabinets, a contemporary armoire, which opens up into two little studies, an eclectic collection of art, including a rug from Romania, etchings from the Ukraine. As their black cat sips water from a martini glass, I think about the lesson from Aesops’ fable, The Crow and the Pitcher: necessity is the mother of invention. We sit around a gas fire and talk about the meaning of social history and how we met our husbands.
Driving home, my husband laments the fact that we didn’t tell our story with enough verve. But, I am so happy to be out with him meeting new people, sipping, eating, chatting just as daylight comes down on Halloween.