When cabin fever hits, some of the most surprising excursions aren’t too far from your own backyard

After Pesach the most common word I heard was “surprisingly.”

“Yom Tov was surprisingly very nice.”

“Surprisingly, we really enjoyed ourselves.”

“Surprisingly, the kids took the spotlight and shined.”

Everyone was surprised.

Should we be surprised? We are the Am Hashem, the Chosen People, and with enormous bitachon and emunah we didn’t just make the best of it — we made it the best. Facing tremendous stress, we reached deep down and learned what’s really important — another daf Gemara, davening with extra kavanah, a quiet meal with a spouse, a short walk with each of our children.

As Shavuos approached and my wife and I faced a second Yom Tov with no children or grandchildren underfoot, no toys strewn about the house, no major shopping and cooking sprees for ten-person seudos, we felt like we needed a break from our house.

We are blessed that my parents own two small houses in Woodridge, in upstate New York near a large yeshivah camp. During the heart of the summer months, the area is teeming with bochurim and families, but before the season starts, there’s no one else around. So we decided to spend Shavuos upstate with my parents. My mother had had enough of being labeled “elderly and vulnerable” (sorry Mom), so they made their way back up north from Florida after a four-month separation from children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Our youngest married couple would join as well. They’d be our first in-home visitors since Purim.

I was very apprehensive. Spending one of the Shalosh Regalim in such an exceedingly isolated setting made me uneasy. No chavrusas, no derashos, no minyanim. No friends. What would Shavuos night look like? Would I feel like I was at Har Sinai? My wife, too, worried it would be just too quiet, too isolated — as if there is such a thing as being overly isolated in these strange times.

And so we apprehensively went up to our little getaway in the woods. It’s a simple little house; the best part is the sweeping wrap-around deck. We joke that the mice are really the permanent residents, and we just visit every summer to spend time on that deck. Since now our little summer home would be the site of a momentous Shavuos, and since flowers and birds were part of the backdrop of Har Sinai, I readied our hummingbird feeder to draw in these amazing creatures that delight us each summer. Mah rabu ma’asecha, Hashem!

And oh, what a (surprisingly) beautiful Yom Tov it was….