What do you miss most?

What do you miss most?

Perhaps you share in the hullabaloo about hair salons. Nary a zoom call passes without someone pining away for the days of haircuts or sharing angst about when their salon might open. The beach grass atop my noggin gets shaved in the mornings and getting nails done just isn’t my thing.

Now Monica’s pies, those would be high on my list but we snuck over to Naples and got a strawberry-rhubarb take-out for Easter. Oh, and a chicken potpie just ‘cause.

At the top of the “miss list” of course, are my children and church community. They occupy my heart and mind every day. But the list I am thinking of includes the holes left by the absence of near daily events, activities, and even chores. Some are obvious, some more subtle.

I miss smiles. Whether from friends or strangers, they have disappeared under masks. On the bright side, learning to notice smiling eyes is a new joy.

Take-out from favorite restaurants is a pale substitute for the full dining experience. But, to those struggling to stay open, thank you. The take-out is much appreciated.

Movies in the theater had already given way to Netflix, et al., and for me retail shopping was less fun than taking out the garbage. No grief there. No, my litany of missed things does not include haircuts, pie, travel, dinner out, movies, or shopping. None of them reach the summit of the “most missed” list.

It is the YMCA. Had you told me at the beginning of this that the thing I would miss most was the gym, I would have thought you deranged. I don’t love working out. Doing sprint intervals on the elliptical machine was a necessary evil to my mind – something to grimace over and inwardly curse as my legs and arms moved up and down. Weights and weight machines? Ugh. Up and down, up and down, in and out, in and out. I never understood the folks who watched themselves in the mirror admiring their efforts en route to a better body. Planks and sit-ups, please, they are the worst. The only really good part of working out is at the end when I get to lie on a soft mat and stretch – bald head dripping with sweat and held within the arms of a private concert pressed into my ears.

The YMCA is a community. All those strange and lovely people side by side with me fighting gravity and age, and all of us hoping for the best in the crap shoot of health, genes, and longevity. I miss the equally strange and lovely staff who create a space for the really old and really young, and everyone in between, all in the same place. Standing here in the distance and looking back, I realize what an amazing feat they accomplished. I can’t wait for them to do it again – sometime.

Yep, right now anyway, it is the YMCA I miss most in this time of social distancing. Thanks you guys, from all of us to all you, wherever you are when you are not at the YMCA.