What are your silver linings? Post ‘em up, please.

​Here in the Epicenter, I could bitch. And I could cry. And I do. But there’s something else going on, and I want to name it.
 
Back in March (long ago, in another galaxy), I got called out by an editor for using the phrase ‘silver linings’ when discussing what we might learn from our virtual schooling experiment. “You can’t say that when people are dying,” she messaged me.
 
Really? I kinda think a crisis like this is when those silver linings are most important.
 
Here are some of mine:
 
I love hearing birds and wind and a dog barking over on the next block, without the NYC traffic, the horns, the choppers overhead, the many voices, the street drills, the building construction. The soundtrack is peaceful (okay, absent the ambulance sirens). With the windows wide open and my eyes closed, there’s a peculiar kind of tranquility that I’ve never heard in six decades in my beloved home town.
 
In a funny way, I’m in better touch with my family, though I miss their offline faces keenly. We talk every day. I feel their support, and know they feel mine. In the middle of a pandemic, there’s something unconditional about it.
 
My apartment is comfortable and full of light, and perhaps I’m inventing this, but I could swear that just a few months ago, I was looking at my bookshelves and fantasizing out loud to the boyfriend about some catastrophe where I was stuck inside rereading all those greatest hits. And if that’s not enough, there are the abundant digital stacks at the New York Public Library that I’m getting acquainted with. (Yeah, there’s the little inconvenience of not being able to concentrate on anything but the deluge of bleak medical and political news, but hey, we’re in for awhile, and I feel the reading bug coming back.)
 
I haven’t bought anything in seven weeks, except groceries and some quality booze. And man does this feel good.
 
I’ve barely looked in the mirror, either. Released! Age does this to a gal, but social distancing frosts that cake nicely.
 
And then... there are the hours of unconstructed, unhurried time. It’s possible that I’ve dreamed of this every day of my adult life. My deteriorated cooking skills are returning. I’m writing this and that in my notebook--not with any goal or imperative, but just because. I slalomed my way through the crowds in Central Park on this lovely Saturday, keeping my distance, until I found my own slab of rock in a copse of trees, where I could take off my mask and do... nothing. Lining? Let’s call it a whole, shiny silver cloud.
 
What are your silver linings?