My friend and I were on the phone talking about all we had to do this week.
Work. Doctor appointments. Work. Getting ready for Thanksgiving. Work. Cleaning the bathroom. Work. COVID-19 boosters. Work.
"Do you sense something missing in all this?" my friend said, her voice afloat with monotone.
"I don't know. A husband?" said I, newly and officially disengaged from mine.
"Fun," she said. "We are missing fun."
What a concept.
In a Protestant work-minded culture colored with COVID-restrictions-this and COVID-restrictions-that, can't get together here, can't get together there, I'd forgotten everything but the have-tos.
Now suddenly, the right side of my brain triggered, my mind flooded with things I once liked to do just because.
Could I re-engage that part of me in a COVID-driven world?
Could my serious-minded friend and I, whose relationship has been built for years around raising children and work and now COVID-19, re-engage them together?
"I know you hate to shop," I said, shyly at first.
"But there's this consignment store that I really like that's all Christmas-y this time of year, and there's never a lot of people in there, but we could wear masks anyway, and it's definitely an extraneous thing because we don't really need anything, but that's what makes it fun, to just walk through, and it would be so atmospheric and even though it smells like fake cinnamon candles, in half an hour, we could be back at our desks."
"Yes!" she surprised me by shouting.
"Also: We could watch Christmas movies!" I said, breathless now. "We could go to that new brewery in town with the high ceilings and play Scrabble, though I have to warn you, I'm rabid."
Monotone suddenly moving to elation. I was laughing and shouting out ideas. And she was, too.
"What if we got together and watched, I don't know, 'Rudolph'?" she said.
"OMG. Nobody in my family likes 'Rudolph.' You would watch 'Rudolph'?"
All these years I'd known E. and I didn't know that she, like me, had a special place in her heart for the little red-nosed reindeer who came to life on the night of my 8th birthday when the show first aired.
My family won't watch. They are put off by the misfit toys. Though for me and my friend, the broken jack-in-the-box just adds to it.
"All that persecution and lack of belonging finding success in a loveless world," my new "Rudolph" soulmate said.
We will always return to analysis and issues, my friend and me, especially at this period in history. For now, in this moment just before Thanksgiving 2021, we decided we'd start our journey into fun later this week with the new brewery; alcohol has its place even if neither of us can handle more than half a glass.
The next week we'd go to the consignment shop.
The following week, we'd see our favorite reindeer.
I hung up the phone, laughing, uplifted, the molecules inside me changed with the knowledge that if just talking about fun makes me laugh without breathing, imagine the real event.
I am imagining now my middle-aged COVID-19 warrior friend and me in front of the big TV screen in my cozy basement.
We will sing along with Burl Ives.
We will flinch when Rudolph's dad all but writes his son out of his will.
We will fling off our COVID-19 masks -- if only for an instant -- as we recite in unison with Rudolph: "I'm cute! I'm cute! She said I'm cuuuute."
(Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988. Visit her website at www.debralynnhook.com; email her at [email protected], or join her column's Facebook discussion group at Debra-Lynn Hook: Bringing Up Mommy.)