When cabin fever hits, some of the most surprising excursions aren’t too far from your own backyard
In real life — I mean regular life — Shabbos is special just because we all stop and come together. But on lockdown, we were together all day every day, so Shabbos got an upgrade: We cooked complicated dishes and baked fancy cakes and made sushi salad and angel hair pasta salad and ambrosia for Shalosh Seudos. Everyone helped. Which wasn’t an advantage.
By the time Shabbos came one week, I was mentally and physically exhausted, which is a socially acceptable way of saying I was just plain fed up. I just wanted some space and quiet, but getting that would mean waking up even earlier than the baby. It was too hard. So I waited until he cried, then scooped him up and stumbled down the stairs before he woke up anyone else.
My husband came downstairs a few minutes later, wished us good Shabbos, and left.
I glanced out the window. I saw a folding table raised on cinder blocks, a tarp stretched over a metal frame. Floodlights dangled over the table, extension cords running to the neighbor’s house.
I went into the kitchen to get a coffee.
The two-year-old came downstairs, bleary with sleep. Ugh, I’m not ready for this yet. I settled him on a chair near the window. Maybe I would still get to drink the coffee.
We watched the minyan coalesce in the gray morning. Did it look like a scene from the fields of the shtetl? Not really, with the brick and stucco Lakewood condos mushrooming over the skimpy patches of grass. The men drifted between parked minivans, like they were uncertain where to put themselves.
