Visiting and Ease

(Birmingham, England display of The Knife Angel sculpture from British Ironwork Centre, photo online at Flickr)

For me, this weekend was all about visiting with other people and feeling at ease about it, comfortable, free of any sense of looming danger. Yes, in a pandemic winter. Yes, at a popular place full of families having a day out and taking no precautions.

When I thought about what to write about for the start of the week, it occurred to me that this low key, seemingly ordinary visit may be worth telling you about. There is something reassuring about simply knowing you aren’t the only one trying to protect yourself and protecting yourself doesn’t have to be uncomfortable all the time.

My wife and I don’t see our friends The Two Ts often enough. (I won’t use their names or even their real initials, for the sake of their privacy.) Not too many miles are between us, but for varying reasons we all have limited time and energy for visiting. They have myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). One uses an electric wheelchair to get around most of the time. She can walk, but needs to preserve that energy for the rest of what she wants to do with her life, such as a regular schedule of volunteer work.

We agreed to meet at the British Ironwork Centre, commonly called British Ironworks. You may have seen some of the amazing metalwork done by artists who have workshops there. The Knife Angel. The sculpture made of surgical tools honoring Percy the Peacock, who guarded the nearby RJAH Orthopaedic Hospital for many years. (Percy died in the arms of one of my wife’s workmates.) The caged King Kong made of spoons sent by children from all over the world. The life sized mammoth on top of a rise that people like to include in the background of a selfie. A one year access card to British Ironworks is one of the cheapest entertainment and leisure deals in the country.

The Two Ts are matter of fact and well practiced at going out and about. For the queue and indoor bottleneck to gain access to the grounds, we all put on face masks. When we got past that, we took off our masks. It was an automatic pattern of behavior. Whenever we needed to get too close to other people or go inside, we put masks on. Outside and away from other people, we took them off. No fuss. No bother.

We went around the grounds a few times, looking at sculptures and talking. All of us wore the right clothes to be comfortable outside in winter. The indoor café and shop are large and were packed full of (unmasked) people. Some interesting stuff is for sale in there, but we don’t need a set of fireplace tools or a boot scraper. The best part of the place is outside where the amazing metal sculptures are on display.

It’s a sprawling place. Even on a Saturday without rain, with the parking lot full and lots of families there, outdoors the groups of people who were there with each other naturally spaced themselves from other groups.

After a couple of loops, we chose an outdoor table and got lunch. The way the table was situated, we were close enough for easy conversation and separate enough not to have to worry about sharing germs. First one of the Ts and I put on masks and went inside to photograph the café menu and the display case full of cakes. Then we went in again to order lunch, which was brought out to our table. After lunch, I held our table while the others went in to get dessert. As I said, we wore masks to go inside. No fuss. No bother.

We made another loop or two around a different part of the grounds, still talking, walking off dessert before going home.

We spent nearly four hours visiting. It was a little more walking than I can really do in one day without paying for it later, a very worthwhile trade-off.

What did we talk about? All sorts of things. A lot of their volunteer work is with children. The Ts want to adopt a child, too. It looks like that is getting close to coming through after a long quest and some disappointments along the way. Some lucky kid is going to have wonderful parents.

One of the Ts is Swiss. We talked about Swiss funerals, including the difference between a Catholic funeral there and the humanist funeral of our Swiss friend this past week. Our respective neighborhoods are quiet and good, so we all included nice tidbits about our relationships with some of our neighbors. The T in the wheelchair loves science and loves to ask questions, so much of the time I was walking and talking with her while my wife and the other T were walking and talking just ahead of us. We discussed societal issues, politics and life in general. We talked about everything.

Just like we did before 2020.

It felt as comfortable and easy and unthreatened as before 2020.

On Sunday I had another outdoor visit, meeting someone to walk her dogs and ours around the grounds at Chirk Castle. Again, this was comfortable and at ease.

My wife and I talk sometimes about how her family, who used to love to visit outdoors as much as possible and would even do so when it was rather chilly, now want to visit indoors without ventilation and disdain air filters. We, who used to prefer to be warm for visits, now seek outdoor visits and wear whatever the weather demands. I can’t say this weekend’s visits were just like pre-pandemic visits because the physical environment we choose has changed.

But the feeling was the same, at ease, safe, comfortable enough physically and especially comfortable for the heart and soul.

We can visit in ways that are reasonably safe and still feel at ease.

It just has to be with people who are on the same page with us about how to go about it.