goodbye to all that

Goodbye to eating in restaurants, to being seated at a table by an affable, unmasked host, to being waited upon and served a meal you didn’t cook and didn’t have to clean up after. Goodbye to the ambient noise, the twenty different conversations floating through the air. So long to the clinking of silverware against plates and dessert menus a mile long. Goodbye to diner placemats with advertisements for Greek fairs and real estate agents on them, to 4am burgers or 6pm pancakes. Goodbye to the restaurants who couldn’t make it through.

Goodbye to concerts, to filing into a small venue, staking your place by the stage or slipping past the crowd to stand by the bar. Goodbye to sweating in unison, to screaming out lyrics together, to the overwhelming feeling of hearing your favorite songs played out in front of you. Goodbye to yelling for encores, to jumping off the stage into the waiting arms of strangers. Goodbye to the venues who couldn’t make it through, to the artists who called it quits because it’s just not sustainable.

Goodbye to Halloween, to waiting for the bell to ring and opening the door to outstretched hands and little kids yelling “trick or treat!” as you handed out tiny bags filled with candy corn or maybe a full sized Hershey bar. Goodbye to taking your kids to strangers’ houses looking for goodies, marching your fairies and superheroes and monsters up and down the street for this one day it was ok to take candy from someone you don’t know.