A good Sunday

Yesterday was a long awaited day at our house.  It was one of  one of the few things made better by the restrictions of the Covid-19 virus.

My husband gave a reading of his newly released book yesterday morning. Because of Covid, there were people in attendance from all over the world. My husband's elementary school friend, his Hebrew high school friend, his relatives, and mine were all in attendance. Friends from Havurat Shalom, and friends from Ansche Chesed all turned out to listen to my husband read. 

If you weren't able to show up yesterday, you can listen here. Tales of the Havurah Unfortunately you can't see all of the wonderful people who joined us. 

After the reading I turned the bread dough I had mixed into a batch of bagels.

After the bagels were baked we went out for a walk. Since you asked, yes, we were masked.

The showy parts of springtime are over. The leaves are no longer shyly opening but are fully present.

As I went over the photos that I took yesterday I realized that it is my own myopic view of things that gave me delight.  This isn't the big picture, but tiny things I thought were beautiful.

I have no idea of what these tiny red berries are. 

Earlier in the season the blooms were right in your face. Yesterday, I had to go searching for blossoms.

I love my camera's zoom lens.

As we walked we passed the playgrounds and paths in Riverside Park where I spent so much of my children's early lives. There were years when I would get to the park with a stroller filled with children and their paraphernalia after breakfast and stay until dinner time. As my husband and I walked the memories of pushing a double stroller with  exhausted children, sticky with sweat, with their bathing suits stuck to their small bodies came flooding back to me.

I remembered princess parties and baseball parties that took place on the grass outside of the playgrounds, picnics and carnivals and tantrums and shrieks of laughter layered over one another on those paths.

Now, decades later I walk with my husband and take photos of things that catch my fancy.

A little further along on our walk we saw more of those pretty red berries.

And now with the sun coming through the leaves.

I wasn't quite able to capture what I was seeing.

We passed a group of allium that was past it's prime but magical in the late afternoon sun.

During the last bit of our walk we were walking along a particularly untended bit of path.  I was reminded of walked with my older sisters when I was a small child they would hold my hand and pay attention to where we were going. I would look at the roadside weeds and imagine that they were a field of wheat.

As we walked home from the park I stopped to admire some new ironwork.

This is such a delight. It's modern but nods to some of the design elements in the house. This is the newel post.

The gates are there for safety but also are a  visual gift to the people who pass by.

I had typed "Perhaps one day our world will return to normal".  I realized that isn't exactly what I mean in light of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Perhaps what I meant to write was better. Perhaps our world will be come better.