My ‘New Normal’ Wedding Anniversary Pandemic Dinner

What do you do when your wedding anniversary falls in the middle of a pandemic? You make lemonade out of lemons.

This week my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary, and as is tradition, we usually go out to dinner and celebrate. Well this year, under the new normal, inside dining is not happening at this time, and outside dining is limited.

So I came up with an idea, get curbside take-out, and head over to one of the local parks and have our own outside dining experience.

That's just what we did. After calling in and getting curbside service at one of our favorite places, House of Yoshida in Bethel, it was off to Putnam Park to dine as the sun was setting at one of the picnic tables right by the pond. Well, did I mention it's the new normal, and to our surprise all of the picnic tables there were locked up to discourage gatherings.

Now what.....fortunately, we knew that there was a table, or should I say a rock wall, near the museum, overlooking the lower park across the street at the Revolutionary War side of Putnam Park just waiting for us, and that's where we headed.

With take out bags, plates and chopsticks in hand, we made the trek to our outside dining destination. It turned out to be even better than I thought because there were two tables, or should I say "stone pillars" that would serve our purpose very well.

I opened the take out bags, and set up our dinner, while my wife, who brought the blanket, set that up. Now, finally we were ready to eat.

I have to say, it was a really nice atmosphere, being out in nature with wildlife all around, though my wife kept looking, hoping no bears would join us.

After dinner, we cleaned things up, you got to take out what you brought in, and took one of the trails around the historic park, to kind of walk off the dinner.

It wasn't the traditional experience that we are used to for our anniversary, but it was something we'll remember for a long time to come. Once again, one of the mantras I live by came in handy...."Improvise, Adapt, Overcome".