Surprise!

"Answer the door, will you?" my sister called from the adjoining room of her hotel suite.  Thursday was her third full day in Seattle.  She had stayed at my house three nights before moving downtown to a hotel on Thursday.  My sister likes hotels as hotels.  For her -- for all our family I suppose -- hotels are destinations in themselves, not just a bed and bath.

I had taken the light rail downtown shortly after she had checked in.  Thursday was my birthday, and a mutual friend was dropping by at about 7 p.m.  We would celebrate my birthday with dinner right there in the hotel room, courtesy of room service.  That must be our friend Suzy at the door, now, I thought.

I stepped to the door and opened it.  My brother and his wife stood in the doorway, grinning at me.  Still cautious about flying, they had driven to Seattle from Oxnard, California -- a fact known to everyone but me.  I hadn't seen them since my last visit to Oxnard in January 2020.   

The expression on my face was worth every mile of the drive, they laughed.

Having dinner in my sister's room was also a fiction, I quickly learned.  We all were fully immunized.  Throwing caution to the wind, my sister had secured reservations at a nearby restaurant.

Although I had enjoyed several breakfasts at a small café after having my shots, those meals had been served very early in the morning when the restaurant was nearly empty.  This was to be my first full dinner in a legally full restaurant.  On Monday, our state had begun allowing eating establishments to increase their occupation from 25 to 50 percent.  I knew this was a good sign -- a sign that our state was getting the virus under control.  Even so, removing my mask, once we were sitting at our table, even with a vaccination, felt like an act of some daring.

We had an excellent meal, with excellent service.  The establishment had lost none of its expertise during the long months of being shut down or severely limited in occupancy.  And rather than a quiet, somewhat subdued dinner in a hotel room, I enjoyed the kind of meal I had missed having ever since the pandemic began -- and enjoyed it together with my brother and sister, family and friends.

I'm well aware that a large majority of my fellow citizens have not yet received even their first shot, but the speed of immunization is picking up quickly.  Dinner Thursday night not only marked another birthday for me -- "Another lap around the sun.  Are you dizzy yet???" wrote one friend -- but also signaled a light at the end of the tunnel, an approaching end to a disastrous experience for our nation and our world.

It was a good birthday.  Not as good as my sixteenth, possibly?  But good.