As the sun finally rose, he was starting to understand the meaning of life. Well not really, but last night while he and his two best friends were deep into conversation, it seemed like they had it all figured out. Their talk was wide ranging and free form, bouncing from one subject to the next with a Kerouac like urgency. As the level in the tequila bottle got lower and lower, the three friends let it flow. Love, sex, aging, death and just how amazing is Roger Daltrey’s scream at the end of Won’t Get Fooled Again?  The sun was beginning to peak over the eastern foothills and yet the three friends felt like they were just getting started.

Like a Coltrane solo their conversation flowed effortlessly, folding over and doubling back, constantly reinventing itself, tendrils twisting and climbing, reaching toward the morning light. There is much history between these three. Their friendship was forged in the psychedelic swirl of the Grateful Dead. Their roots go deep into the past and far towards the future. Theirs is an enduring friendship, rock solid and steady. Their conversation continued to swing from the hilarious to the sublime and to all points in between. They were improvising and playing off of each other. Coltrane continued to blow.

Outsiders listening in would  be amazed at the amount of sarcasm and abuse that’s bantered about. However one thing would be very clear, the love that these guys have for one another is undeniable. They can keep it light as a feather or go as deep as you’d be honest enough to let yourself go.

Their tequila ritual, born on a winter night in Mexico, is essential to these proceedings. The pouring of the amber liquid. The slicing of the lime. The clinking of the glasses. The deal is sealed once again. They are brothers in every sense of the word.

When I awoke this morning, the sun looked a little brighter, the sky a deeper shade of blue, the air seemed fresher, crisper, the birdsong a bit cheerier. I wasn’t thinking about covid or Trump or racial injustice or climate change. All seemed right with the world because today, pitchers and catchers reported to spring training camp.

As our long covid winter begins to wind down, major league ballplayers dust off their gear, bid farewell to their families and head down to Arizona or Texas or Florida to begin the annual rite known as spring training. Last season is a memory, the slate is wiped clean and for now every team is in first place. For one brief sun splashed moment, all things seem possible.

The start of the baseball season coincides with the beginning of spring and shares the associated themes of rebirth and renewal. A baseball season unfolds at a slower pace than the other major team sports. It begins amidst the promise of springtime, gradually giving way to the dog days of summer and culminating in the chilly air of autumn. When the first pitch of the season is thrown, spring flowers are reaching their shining faces towards the sun, trees are beginning to bud out. By the time the World Series champions mob each other atop the pitcher’s mound, the ground will be covered with frost and the colorful leaves of autumn.

In our brave new covid world, there are many unknowns surrounding the upcoming season. Barring unseen circumstances, games will begin on April 1. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner) actual fans will be allowed inside the ballparks, thankfully avoiding the sad spectacle of  seats filled with cardboard cutout humans. The air will be alive with the screams and cries, laughter and cussing of real fans, not prerecorded crowd noise piped in over the stadium’s PA system. The twin aromas of hot dogs and peanuts will waft through the air. Fourteen bucks for a beer? I will pay it, as long as I can sip that beer in a seat along the third base line with my friends on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The starting lineups will be announced, the booming sound of the players names echo through the cavernous ballpark. The anthem will be sung, we’ll stand along with the players, caps over our hearts. The home plate umpire will shout two of the sweetest words ever uttered together in the English language; “Play ball!” I can hear it now, the snap of a brand new baseball hitting the catcher’s mitt, the crack of the bat, the mighty roar of the crowd as a majestic home run arcs into the left field bleachers. Spring is on the way and baseball is back!

Towards the end of Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, James Stewart’s character George Bailey is at the end of his rope.  He has just been shown what his community would have been like had he never been born. It is a nightmare vision. He stands in the middle of a bridge in the dead of night staring down at the dark, angry river below. A cold and bitter wind blows. His head is bowed, his hands clenched in prayer. George Bailey’s voice is choked with emotion as over and over he repeats this mantra: “I want to live again, I want to live again!” Of course he does live again. In essence, George Bailey is born again. He sees his life with new eyes. His dark nightmare has given him a profound gratitude for his friends, family and the life that he has lived.

Unlike George’s nightmare which always ends, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to this existential nightmare that we’re all mired in. Human beings, inherently social creatures, are being forced to live in a world largely devoid of meaningful human contact. When I watch a film on tv where people are smiling and enjoying themselves in a social situation, I’m filled with a profound sadness and longing for a life that seems so long ago.

I used to complain when I had to drag our kids out of bed and schlep them to school, often arriving with just minutes to spare. What I wouldn’t give for a morning like that now. Very few kids are getting sick yet they’re paying a disproportionately high price during our collective Covid nightmare. “School”  for millions of kids has been reduced to sitting in their rooms staring at a computer screen all day. No friends, no sports, no fun. For my children, distance learning has been an abject failure. They have lost an important time in their lives that they’ll never get back and that reality is absolutely heartbreaking to me.

When will we ever be able to see another persons face? See their smile? Shake their hand? Kiss them? I volunteer for a non-profit organization that gleans excess produce from farms and homes to give to the needy. I have no idea what the people I work with look like because I’ve never seen any of their faces.

On my bike ride yesterday I passed by my kids old middle school. The marquee out front reads: “Six feet apart but still together.” Does anyone really believe that? The pandemic has torn a gaping hole in our social fabric. We’ve never been so isolated. I sit in front of these Zoom meetings and desperately long for real human interaction without fear.

With virtually none of the usual social activities to mark the time, our days go by in a kind of fog, each one pretty much like the one before it. Is today Tuesday? What did we do last weekend? Did Christmas really happen. It’s all so stressful and disorientating. For most of my life I’ve been a fairly optimistic person but nowadays I find myself in unfamiliar territory. That half full glass is not quite as full as it used to be.

Fans of the Twilight Zone may remember the episode where a man finds himself in a town devoid of people. He becomes increasingly frantic as he races  from house to house in a panic looking for someone, anyone. He eventually breaks down, reduced to a sobbing wreck. As it turns out he is not in a town at all but in an isolation booth. This man is an astronaut, the booth an experiment to see how he would hold up during a long solo space mission. The empty town is his nightmare.

I desperately want things to turn out like they did at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. We all emerge from this dark nightmare with a renewed gratitude for life and hope for the future. But of course this is real life, not the movies. Lately I’ve been feeling less like George Bailey and more like that poor guy in the Twilight Zone. Fortunately, the eleventh hour arrival of the cavalry led by Joe Biden atop his white steed may yet save us all from total disaster. I am guardedly optimistic, all of my fingers and toes are crossed. Time will tell.

I want our kids to go to school, real school, again. I want them to deal with the ups and downs of actual high school life. I want to see people’s faces again. I want to pass someone on the hiking trail without them turning away in fear. I want to hug my friends again. I want once again to go with my wife to our favorite Italian restaurant on a Saturday night. I want to sit in this wonderfully crowded place, listen to the buzz of a dozen different conversations, breathe in the heady aromas of garlic and tomato sauce and watch the bussers and waitstaff buzz around like bees. I want to go to the ballpark on a sun splashed Wednesday afternoon and sit with 30,000 other non-cardboard humans while we cheer on our beloved San Francisco Giants. I want to arrive at Russian River Brewery right when Happy Hour begins, fight my way through the crowd to the only empty seat at the bar and order my favorite IPA, sipping it slowly to savor the delicate hoppy flavors.

A virtual life is no life at all. I want to live again!