Friday Froth: Can Anything Be The Same?

The bar where my initials were once carefully poured into the foam crown of a Guinness every time I called, with a place setting waiting both in case I wanted a snack, and to save my favorite spot, is gone forever. It was my first local, a place close by where reliably stopping in and not causing too much trouble develops into an earned mutual welcoming. The place feels like a friend's living room - you know where to sit, they know what you like, and everyone slips easily back into the conversation you shared last time you stopped in. The whole experience, whether as a relief from the day, the glow of alcohol, whatever brought you back through the doors - it just feels warm. Like I said at the start, it's gone now. The place I mention hasn't been open for years, but what about your place? What about so many of these shared environments whose doors we'll never walk through again? What will it be like at the old regular tables and spots we used to take up now the ones who lived through America's epidemic experience may reopen? "Everything's changed," they tell us - but can anything be the same?

Desperate with spring fever, I've been spending a lot of time walking in quiet woods. I've watched grey branches clack together in the breeze one week, and visited with them in slow transition as tiny knobs of buds appeared, then flowered, then suddenly burst out with mint green leaves like time suddenly sped up. Or maybe I slowed down, spending more of my life looking up at green waves in the warming breeze then down where my feet would stumble over rocks and roots. Bumped shins are worth it, though, watching the circle of life come back. Small clusters of the old life are beginning to pop up just this week, on patios, on sidewalks, and cafes cobbled together from parking lots, as Connecticut cautiously picks its way back from the storm shelter of this winter's end.

There was a bit of illicit nostalgia, drinking in parks, and on benches at beachside coves, like physical manifestations of neural pathways you last used in high school. The downside: leaning against your cars in some arc-lit parking lot at night, trading variations on "there's nothing to do, UGH!" That felt familiar, too, and it got old even faster. So welcome the fuck back, The Pub! I have missed you: your eight-dollar beers I could buy at the store for three, the what-the-hell-did-I-just-put-my-elbow-in sticky spot on the bar, the one stool I know is the wobbly one. I've stood at the top of hills, breathing gulps of crisp, fresh air, looking over scenic New England valleys, and thought instead of quick Sunday lunches gone by that turned into "holy shit it's dark out already," and gasp-inducing credit card bills. I almost, but not quite, miss that one dude who comes to band night and once tried to convince me of the hollow Earth conspiracy. Not him, alright, but other people! I want friends to come from all over the state with "Would you believe this" stories from their disparate workdays with which I have nothing in common, besides everything else in our lives but work. I miss inside jokes. I miss bartender stories - the ones they tell when they get a spare minute, cross their arms, lean back on a cooler and tell each other like the customers aren't even there. Dammit, do I miss a plate of perfect nachos, Belgian frites, a bowl of pho.

We all do, so here we are. The sun was out on Wednesday the 20th when Connecticut's closure laws flipped with a snap like a thrown circuit breaker, and anywhere with a staff and the stubbornness to navigate a labyrinth of regulations saw people line up, make reservations, to sit at their tables once again. Friends are people, but sometimes they're places, too. I hope we can find the feeling we forgot.

See you out there.