“After all, we are our bodies…and something else.” Michel Foucault to Simeon Wade at Artist Pallet in Death Valley. `

What a great time to have a birthday, the Covid Pandemic is not over – there were 11,310 new cases in the US last week; 28 new cases in San Mateo County, alone – but the panic part of the pandemic seems to be over. Here, at least, where the sushi restaurant in San Jose, where we had gone to get takeout, was full of maskless diners. Life hasn’t returned to normal yet, but we are close enough so that it is starting to feel like normal. It is a new normal, however, not quite the same as the old normal. While we were squirreled away in quarantine, the world seems to have slightly changed, but, the reality is that I, along with everybody I have seen during the last couple of weeks, have changed. We are a social species; it is our interaction with others, after all, the bumping up against the walls of other realities, that define who we are and we’ve not had that in a long time.

I know this, still I’ve come to like the solitude of being home, the selfishness of not bumping up against other realities, the torpor of watching TV. After months of isolation, the thought of seeing other people brings up my innate androphobia. That’s only the thought, though, the reality of seeing other people is actually one of joy and Love. The reality is the sweet feeling of fam Love, and being loved, that I’d forgotten while in quarantine, is even sweeter after the absence.

Just before my birthday, Michele and I had a birthday dinner with my daughter, Samantha, her husband Gabe, and our very grand grandkids, Auggie and Charlotte, at their newly remodeled home. They all seemed the same, still, like the house, they, we have all been slightly remodeled and improved. Being together, after months of absence, felt natural and comfortable and extra special.

On my actual birthday, Michele and I had dinner at Camper, a new – to us – restaurant in Menlo Park. Sitting outside in the cool of the evening, eating a meal freshly cooked by someone else, seemed almost magical.

Last weekend, Courtney, Tracy, and Richard came over to our place for dinner and it turned into another birthday celebration. It felt so normal, almost as if we hadn’t been in quarantine for the last fifteen months. But we have been in quarantine and it has changed us. We have slowed down, opened up, and softened.

We live in a world that is far from perfect and, in many ways, seems to be getting worse. I still have no idea of why I am anemic – although I have been getting iron infusions for the last three weeks and I feel much more energetic – and I have no idea how, or even if, we are going to face Climate Change, but this year, right now, as spring turns into summer, Life feels Grand.