Grace notes in a dirge

The Time of Corona will never be looked back on as the “good old days.” But small vestiges of this pause, when recalled in better — though dramatically modified — days that are coming, may prompt a wistful smile.

Even now, smack in the thick of it, I know how fortunate I am. My wife and I fall into the “inconvenienced” category. On a scale of one to 10 — with serious illness and worse at 10 — we’re a minus three.

We, our family and friends are healthy. We miss seeing them — grandchildren in particular. But that will eventually change.

If a musical description could be applied to the well-rid month of April, it would be this: a dirge.

When the gloom, the rain, the wind, the bone-chilling cold subsided to allow, we sat on our front lawn at cocktail hour and watched the altered world pass.

Grace notes: 1 Keeping our distances, we’ve actually talked with neighbors — both blithely and seriously. The cocktail hour as comfort, fresh air and therapy. 1 We’ve talked with total strangers. 1 Hot tip: Buy bicycle stock. Cannondale, maybe. They’re based in Wilton. Have never seen so many bikes on my street. Kids, adults, codgers.

1 Kids emerging in late afternoon. Their at-home schooling completed, they take to the street in exuberant abandon with skateboards, scooters, bicycles and whatever other decidedly low-tech items are available. For the moment, adult-organized and -coached sports are absent, the only pressure being for the smaller kids to keep up with the bigger.

1 As of Sunday, Mrs. Daly and I have been in virtually constant company for 65 days, including 14 days of vacation that began in February. Not that anyone is counting. Having survived this, though, I’m reasonably certain our marriage will extend into the new world that is coming.

Let’s hope all of the above continues into the post-corona world that is coming.

Of course, everything is going to change, from the protocol at restaurants, to protocol in every sort of workplace and our behavior in them.

I knew a tough old Irish guy a hundred years ago. He was a plain-spoken man, an immigrant, a father of three. He was old enough to have seen tough times in Ireland.

He was sometimes disapproving of what he saw here in the U.S. “You know,” he would say, “this country could stand a touch of famine.”

He wasn’t calling down a curse. He was tsk-tsking a lack of gratitude in a comfortable society. For those of us lucky enough to get through this relatively unscathed, let’s carry that gratitude into the coming days.