A walk in the sun...

Last weekend I took a walk with a friend, for the first time in two weeks, who is stressed out beyond what's healthy because she is still working, from home now, and as usual in American management these days they want more with less while giving mere lip service to how much they know more help is needed and they're working on it and oh, BTW, now that you're working from home you can be on duty and on the job any hour and all hours.  It was a nice pleasant, warm spring day with the verdant outside world of lawns and bushes bursting forth with the colors of the season of resurgence.

We went three miles and listened to birds chirping and watched whole families bicycling by single file, dad in front and mom bringing up the rear, like a couple of ducks shooing ducklings across a roadway, and just worked off the gloominess and despondency of always being inside with no physical contact with others (she lives alone, as I do, and that induces a special languor that easily settles into a blue funk not overcome by calls to or from your friends).  We saw a thirty-something man come out of his home in his green scrubs and get into his car at the curb and called out to him from a safe distance inquiring if he was was going to work, and when he indicated yes, we called out to him to Be Safe.

Everyone maintained respectful distances from everyone else, except for some more closely spaced couples or family units, and mostly went to opposite sides of the street as persons passed by other persons.  And almost everyone had a mask on, the new norm which could be with us for years going forward.

There was some good news.

 My last walk took me past a house whose front yard was littered with little riding devices of all sorts, a baby seat, bicycles, tricycles, little scooters, plus pet containers like water bowls, and I wondered if the parents inside were able to cope with all those kids cooped up on the premises (plus doing the cooking, cleaning, homeschooling etc.) and as we walked by that house, the parents were in the yard, alive, well and apparently ably managing the chaos created by four young children, three dogs and any stray tiny friend that wanders by or in.