Like they say, it's not over until the fat lady sings. Thom and I celebrated our impending flight north with a waterfront stroll in Palm Beach, our first. We parked near the Worth Avenue clock tower.
Rising oceans threaten the narrow beach in front of the opulent homes that line A1A. Waves crash against the sea wall at high tide, which prevented us from walking any further south.
Nothing like a cool bed of sea weed on which to rest your weary head.
Covid 19 still has The Breakers mostly shuttered. The lockjaw set flees in the off season anyway.
Thom posed on the giant rocks that may or may not protect the luxe hotel from flooding in the near future. He complained that the bright colors of the hat he purchased in Viet Nam didn't register in black & white.
I was lucky to already be in Florida when covid-19 brought the world to its knees. Early in the New Year, Chris asked if I'd seen an article about the novel corona virus circulating in China. Our conversation briefly brought me back to July 3, 1981 when the New York Times first reported about what eventually became the AIDS pandemic. It couldn't be as bad as THAT, I said thinking of David, my first and only boyfriend, who succumbed to HIV in 1993.
Oddly enough, covid-19's biggest impact was cohabiting with another person for the first time in nearly 40 years. Thom fled Queens two days prior to Governor Cuomo's shut down of the state and self-quarantined when Governor DeSantis decided that too many New Yorkers were flocking to Florida.
Thom arrived the day after Palm Beach County closed its beaches. I began swimming my 1,850 strokes at dawn every other day when a sheriff's deputy (who claimed to be a former triathlete) told me to exercise discretion.
Hour-long saltwater immersion, a plastic surgery scar and backlight do nothing for 7:45 a.m. selfies.
No two early morning skies were alike. That's why Christine's friend Rick made sure he photographed EVERY sunrise during the final years of his life.
Social distancing didn't really become a thing in Lake Worth until early April. Don Victorio's, our very responsible local green market, restricted entry to five customers at a time and painted circles six feet apart on the sidewalk outside.
Walmart used grocery carts and tape to keep customers in line and apart.
Grocery shopping didn't require covering your face at first. But when it did, Thom and I made a deal: I shopped with a mask he'd received from a factory in China
. . . and he did the disinfecting.
He also made a huge eggplant parmigiana. On our return home, he'll drop off a frozen piece for Christine in DC.
We got some daily food prep competition going with Florian, texting menu photos back and forth across the country pretty much every day. Where would you rather have eaten?
Chicago fare:
Homemade spätzle
Festive macaroni salad
Glazed ham a la beggar
German potatoes and white asparagus
Easter bunny dog treats
Lake Worth fare:
Oatmeal with fresh berries
Sunday bran muffins
Fruit salad
Caprese variation (chef's tip: pesto lasts a lot longer than basil leaves!)
Crudites, hummus & V8
Linguine with clam sauce and fresh garlic bread
With help from Ina Garten, Thom substituted a batch of killer cosmos for our usual weekend margaritas ("if it's margarita time, it must be the weekEND"). Thanks for the new cocktail shaker, Joe and Magda!
Retirement prepared me well for social isolation at home:
eat breakfast
read New York Times
exercise (75 push ups & 200 sit ups on weekdays; 50 push ups and 100 sit ups on weekends)
bike 6 miles (except weekends; personal best: 32 minutes)
Thom, a highly skilled floater (see above), had some difficulty adjusting to the Folly routine until he discovered the vicarious thrills reading offers. He began with Homosaic, my memoir ("it sounds just like you"), and completed nearly ten novels including a couple of doorstoppers. His favorite to date: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, the page-turning chronicle of misery that everyone but me seems to love. We also went our separate ways in the evening after he chose "Breaking Bad" over "My So-Called Life." "Who wants to relive high school again?" he scoffed. My inner 16-year-old girl, that's who!
The pandemic introduced us to Zoom calls, including one that encompassed three time zones. But mostly the Pines crew assembled on Sunday mornings to compare risk thresholds, predict the future and share time-fillers, just like everyone else with computers and enough coin to pay for broadband.
In 2005, the Red Cross sent me to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rescue workers used this symbol to mark houses with structural instabilities in the Ninth Ward, meaning that residents couldn't re-occupy them after floodwaters receded.
"Look what else she's doing," I could have tweeted in the Fake News era, using a photo I doctored with rudimentary software on my Mac. "Stigmatizing covid-19 victims."
Fortunately, the truth is a lot less interesting, almost reassuring given the situation in New York City. Although Lake Worth is a hot spot in Palm Beach County, our numbers seem minuscule: as of May 28, 356 people tested positive in a zip code populated by nearly 31,000 people.
As you can imagine, there are far fewer cases (just 32!) in Palm Beach proper which has 1/3 of our population. Thom and I biked or walked the entire length of the island where many of the wealthiest people in America own obscenely large mansions, mostly hidden behind very tall hedges.
There's even a local "vicarage"!
But the pandemic denied even the wealthiest residents an opportunity to stroll on the recently replenished beach.
It was hard to feel much sympathy. Thom's attitude is more charitable than mine, which can be summed up as "off with their heads." Scofflaws tended to be younger and fit.
For a walk along North Ocean Boulevard, we parked across from the Palm Beach Country Club's golf course.
Here's the view from the north end of the island, looking east towards Palm Beach Shores.
Construction, deemed essential, continued apace, complete with social distancing.
The North Trail takes you along the Intracoastal past gorgeous trees.
We often used Worth Avenue as a jumping off point for our walks.
Several stores were open by appointment only.
Residents walked their pigs as usual.
Some of the real estate in West Palm Beach is pretty pricey, too.
Apartments in the Bristol, just over the draw bridge, can cost as much as $14 mil.
Painting sexy Latinas under bridges seems to be a thing in Florida.
Speaking of sexy Latinas, this woman filmed a virtual exercise class. Location, location, location!
Henry Flagler's house, seen here from across the Intracoastal, is Thom's favorite. Somehow, I don't find Gilded Age abodes nearly as offensive as the newer models in Palm Beach. Unlike most of today's rapacious capitalists, Flagler earned his wealth by building something: oil refineries and railroads.
An enormous banyan tree grows nearby.
I'll take funky Lake Worth any day.
Although I must admit this sidewalk grave marker on Lake Avenue does give me pause.
Bernie's local campaign headquarters. He's peering out from the window.
Wishful thinking.
Thom scored a pair of hair clippers at Walmart before they became scarcer than toilet paper. Like my fresh 'rona cut?
Life goes on as usual for critters big and small, including the tiny nocturnal frogs around the Folly pool who belt louder than Ethel Merman.
Can you find the birds?
This iguana's unreal colors reminded me of Mar A Lago's most famous occupant, who lives less than two miles south. Except his jowls, not his crest, are orange.
Staying at the Folly two months longer than planned gave the local flora, some of it previously ignored, time to bloom.
Spathoglottis (ground orchid)
Aechmea fasciata
Frangipani
Plumeria
Tabebuia tree
The vivid Royal Poinciana tree blossoms blew me away
. . . but not enough to coordinate the exterior of my house.
Google image couldn't help identify these beauties.
The blooms don't last long when the rains come.
I spend almost as much time editing and organizing my photos as I do taking them.
You've already seen selections from Florida, Food, Friends, Miscellaneous,Nature and Selfies. These were among best in other categories during the pandemic:
Abstractions
Bicycles
Black & white
People
And now it's time to pop our bubble and head north. But not before wishing Joe happy birthday from the Folly pool!
