Postcard from Out There John H. Ostdick

Postcard from Out There

Ripping the Band-aid Off Our Sheltered Pandemic Life

Story and Waterlogue Photo Illustration by John H. Ostdick

Jumping back into life among the masses wasn’t as disorienting as we thought it might be, but the new normal doesn’t seem quite so yet.

For more than a year, we had adapted. Recoiled. Masked. Zoomed. Back-yard patio visited at a safe distance. Traveled vicariously through reposted social media odysseys. Remained virtually alive in our house by a wooded creek.

Post-vaccination, we began to peer around that corner out there again. Started slowly by grocery shopping at seven in the morning instead of six. Attended outdoor dinners of as many as four couples, reacquainting ourselves with social graces, although not without a lot of repeatedly talking over the other guests with the first notions that popped into our disoriented heads.

Friends and family members started booking flights, packing their cars, and heading out there. We knew we weren’t ready to fly yet. Too fast, too soon, too chaotic for the cautiousness that we have become a bit perhaps too chummy with.

Amid horror stories surfacing about limited, price-jacked hotel vacancies and exorbitant and scarce rental car availabilities, we started formulating some baby steps, such as a day trip to one of our happy places, masks at the ready and little daring involved.

And then, suddenly, a happy, bouncing puppy flash of anticipation hit us, like seeing a distant friend walking up to the door. Or in this case, landing at a huge, buzzing airport almost 20 miles away. An Offer She Couldn’t Refuse

For some time, my pastry chef-writer wife Michelle and I had been extending a standing offer to Jeanne (a food and garden editor-writer who is presently calling Des Moines, Iowa, home) to come visit us in Dallas. As part of her continuing writing research, Jeanne was booked last spring on a bus tour of reality TV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines’ remaking of Waco, Texas, in their own vision. COVID-19 nipped that in the bud as well. So, when Jeanne told Michelle that she was soon to be on her way to a communal Kansas camping trip with mostly strangers (I wait, without spoiling the tale, to read Jeanne’s account of that adventure in some genre at a point in the future, dear readers), Michelle popped out with an invitation that surprised even her at the time.

Why don’t you come here prior to your camping trip? You can help me bake our monthly cookie batches for ICU nurses, and we will take you to Waco while you are here.

The Waco card proved the final straw, the big carrot, the offer she could not refuse. And that, my friends, is where Michelle walked into my home office and let me know we were to have our first house guest in more than a year and a half, and when this story shifted to present tense.

My first thought is, who is this person standing in my doorway? This can’t be the same uber-cautious spouse who has been toeing an agonizing conservative social contact line for months. A house guest in quarters where cleaning and straightening has been at best haphazard for a long spell? She’s coming in less than two weeks? Shifting Gears

So, out come the calendars: what to do and see in Dallas; brainstorming options for interesting short hops from here; scheduling for two days for intensive baking and packing cookies for our ICU nurses; and figuring out the best time for a jaunt to Waco, which is an almost two-hour drive.

We scrub, plan and shop for fun meal ingredients, and shoot texts full of activity ideas to Jeanne to determine her preferences. The shut-ins are throwing open the doors and windows.

Before we know it, we are hovering at baggage claim, mask on, and although all vaccinated, sharing ever-so-wary hugs. The masks stay on all the way home and into the den — then suddenly, they are not, and everyone relaxes.

By consensus, our first full day settles on a drive to our “happy place,” where friends are conjuring up some cool things with food in a small town a couple of hours away. A quick text to determine if we are welcome (our friends are not yet allowing customers inside their shop, rather selling their products on the front porch, and one of their children has been fighting a non-COVID virus). All systems are go, however, and early the next day we are off in a westerly fashion, noting all the curious roadside distractions for Jeanne as we go.

The first thing I’ve noticed about navigating post-vaccine times is a heightened road craziness. Perhaps it is exaggerated in car-crazy Texas, but while so many of us were sheltering, vehicles seem to have been hellbent on breeding. Traffic is unhinged. People who heavily reduced their road time the last 18 months apparently lost their driving skills. And those who remained on the road throughout seemingly got comfortable driving 20 miles per hour above the speed limit.

Many are not making the adjustment to the new normal.

Nonetheless, the day turns transcendent. We slip inside Kevin and Holly’s closed shop in jovial spirits. It’s as if a champagne cork flies across the room. Bubbles of joy, relief, and invigoration flow generously. Turns out that we picked their wedding anniversary to visit, and they hadn’t made any plans. Celebration is de rigueur. As we expected, Jeanne is smitten by our friends and vice versa. Kevin prepares some wonderful hand pies filled with homemade pimiento cheese and squash from their farm, served with ample fresh guacamole. The shared storytelling and laughter are vivid, like cool, cleansing breezes moving throughout the Two Clay Birds Garden Market.

Occasionally, customers will walk across the front porch, and look at us inside, trying to determine if the shop is open again. At this point, Holly will mask up and step out to greet them and tell the customers that she and Kevin are using the down time to renovate the store, and that they hope to reopen fully in the fall.

Soon, Kevin pulls out his guitar and his incredible voice adds to our merriment. With a little coaxing, Michelle’s ukulele joins the fray. Before we know it more than five hours have elapsed. It is time to hit the highway for home. As we drift through the pockets of small-town rush hours, I decide that this "clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose (Friday Night LightsCoach Taylor nod)," amazing day is officially our post-pandemic Day One. Our hearts seem lightened in concert. A Blur of Traffic and Activity

The rest of the week goes quickly, full of jaunts through traffic to Dallas spots we think Jeanne will like. The disappointingly renovated Farmers’ Market that has glaringly little fresh produce and beaucoup of trendy shops serving the new housing developments surrounding it. Barbecue sampling at Pecan Lodge and Heim’s Barbecue locations. A sprinkling of Mexican food. A Frida Kahlo exhibit at the wonderfully cool Dallas Museum of Art. A little pre-campout shopping for Jeanne. Happy hour margaritas at warm outside venues. People, people, people are everywhere. Masks come and go by circumstance.

Each day we retreat to the house tired but full of food talk (Michelle being a pastry chef, Jeanne a cookbook author and longtime food editor/writer, and I a kitchen everyman). We produce this month’s 300 cookies for our ICU nurses. Michelle and Jeanne partake in what the chef calls cookiniving,playing with various ideas in the kitchen. My fabled martinis follow.

I pass through the den one early evening, and they are seated on the couch with enough open cookbooks around them to start a first-rate culinary library. The energy level is high, even as the eyelids grow heavy. A City Branded

We get Jeanne to Waco. By now, the Chip and Joanna Gaines story is well embedded in entrepreneurial and reality TV lore. They purchased their first property in 2003. They formed a construction company, Magnolia Homes, that started remaking parts of Waco, a city of more than 135,000 by the Brazos River in central Texas. Chip the builder and Joanna the designer really made their broader mark with HGTV’s Fixer Upper. The Gaines’ empire grew from there.

Today, their brand is everywhere here. People come from around the country to visit their expansive Magnolia Silos location in downtown Waco to buy the Gaines look in home appointments and more.

We arrive about ten on a Wednesday, to escape the weekend crowds and because it is supposed to be farmers’ market day in the pavilion area. The adjacent parking lot is already filling. An impressive line is already formed outside the site’s Magnolia Bakery, which opens at ten. We are experiencing our

first Texas summer heat of the season. To my view, Magnolia doesn’t hold up under the intense white afternoon light. Jeanne gathers her desired anecdotes and mental images, however, before we retreat. World’s Best Peach Shake

Of course, we cannot leave Waco without introducing Jeanne to the world’s best peach shake, found at one of the town’s oldest traditions, The Health Camp. Truth be told, there is not a healthy thing on the small establishment’s menu, but that’s the inside joke.

By the time we deposit Jeanne back at the airport to continue to her camping excursion, the cover is completely torn off our pandemic hibernation. We still feel a deviant-virus-threatening caution to our steps — we aren’t ready to jump onto the plane with her, for example — but we are sketching out plans for a driving trip to visit a legion of gathering family and dear friends near Crested Butte, Colorado, in August. And raising our martini glasses to what’s out there in our future.

Cloud Bank, Long Beach, New York Photo by Karen Dinan