April 27, 2021: Comeback Tour, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close-

One of my young friends found a phrase for me that I was struggling to dredge up out of my memory bank: Comeback Tour. Like some nearly-forgotten rock star, I began my vaccinated Comeback Tour last week, in Seattle.

I have an extended friends-who-are-family-by-now clan up there. I met two babies born during the pandemic, one eight weeks old and one, eight months. Their parents even let me hold them. I saw friends of my own generation, and younger friends, and I talked and ate and drank to my heart’s delight, and binged TV shows on fancy channels that I don’t get at home.  I bought a crumpet from the crumpet place in the Pike Place Market, and fish ‘n chips from Ivar’s. I had green eggs and ham (pesto, delicious). I stayed in a friend’s beautiful home on Skagit Bay, and drove by fields of tulips on a rainy last morning.

I had seen a few loved ones last summer (outside, distanced, briefly, no groups), but hadn’t seen the rest for a couple of years. I didn’t manage to see everybody, but there’ll be more chances. Comeback Tours have many stops.

In general, people were in good shape, maybe a little longer-haired than before. Those working remotely were enjoying, or not enjoying, work in the usual spectrum – nobody had gone stark, staring mad. Those far from their kids were dealing with the separation as best they could, and planning reunions to come. People were doing worthy, serious, admirable, fascinating, and creative things, as ever. The science and medicine types had had a hell of a year.

We might have become a little bit more concentrated versions of ourselves, slightly less malleable than we used to be – but then again, we’ve all aged during this time, too.

Everyone I visited was a long-time friend, and hanging out was comfortable, despite the long hiatus. Still, I suffered flashes of self-consciousness. Occasionally, I’d do or say something that felt as if I’d missed a hitherto effortless cultural nicety, or lost the rhythm of a conversation, or interrupted somebody, or - my favorite new thrash - done a terrible job of saying goodbye.  I swear I used to have more social graces.

Also, encountering only our house for so many months, I’d forgotten about unfamiliar appliances. For instance, we had to replace our toilet during the pandemic, and the new one sports one of those “soft-close” lids where you barely suggest to it that maybe it would like to close, and then you leave the room to give it some privacy, and it considers the suggestion, then slowly settles into place. (Didn’t choose that feature – it just arrived that way.) All weekend, I kept forgetting other people don’t have those, and banging down the lids.

And then, extending the Loud Noises theme, I had a strange experience as I was driving back down I-5 from Mount Vernon, to my final Seattle stop. I was startled by a very loud, very close BANG, and then I heard the waterfall patter of safety glass raining into my car. Something had shattered my moon roof.

I was only half an hour from my destination, and I just kept going. When I got there, I knocked on the door and held out a handful of safety glass, and said, The weirdest thing just happened to me. My friends, Keith and his sister Laura, got the shop vac, and cleaned up the car. We never found a bolt or a rock or anything that could have broken the glass. Keith fashioned a cardboard cover for the hole. They fed me coffee and pastries, and we told stories, and then I went on my way.

Being helped out by friends isn’t particularly remarkable, but the thing is, Keith and Laura are in their thirties. I’ve known them both since birth, and now they are grown people with shop vacs and electrical tape and empathy and excellent coffee-and-pastry skills for resettling someone whose moon roof just imploded. 

It felt magical to be tended to kindly and efficiently and without condescension, in this stretch before I get Really Old and need serious tending. The cardboard cover, cleverly taped, made it all the way to Portland. It may last until the roof parts come in. My gratitude list for today is headed up by Friends, and Safety Glass.