“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone …”
There are so many things we used to take for granted. When my wife and I lived in California, we had a multiplex movie theatre exactly one mile from us. We could literally decide to go to the movies five minutes before showtime and be on time.
We had three restaurants we liked no more than three or four blocks away. One of them served the best desserts I have ever tasted, fruit cobblers of different flavors.
We could drive less than an hour — depending on traffic — and we would be at one of several beautiful Pacific Ocean beaches. My own favorite was closer to two hours away in Orange County. Huntington Beach, or Surf City USA.
Now it’s a 33-hour drive, pretty much coast to coast. I’ll be fortunate if I ever walk on the beach again.
Of course, we chose to leave California. The reasons were mostly financial, although the desire to be closer to our adult children came into play as well. In 2015, when both Pauline and Virgile were stationed in Washington, D.C., we made it up from Georgia three times. That was great.
Then Pauline went to Guatemala for four years and Virgile went to Paraguay for three.
They’ve both been in town since August and they’ll be there till next summer, when Pauline leaves for her next assignment.
We were hoping to see them for Christmas, but the coronavirus changed all that. We have high hopes that the vaccine will be available for us early enough to get up there some time in the spring.
But even if we do — whether we’re there in Virginia or home in Georgia — it will be a very different world.
Thousands of restaurants around the country have closed and will never reopen. The saddest part of it is that many of them are individually or family owned and have been part of their communities for years or even generations. Oh, there will still be McDonalds and Burger King, Olive Garden and Applebee’s. They’ve got plenty of backing, and they have kept going with GrubHub and Door Dash.
I’m not sure any of my three favorite restaurants back home in California will survive, and movie theaters may have a tougher time of it than restaurants. People have big enough television sets now and enough access to video streaming services that going to the movies and battling crowds and expensive refreshment stands no longer seems like such a great idea.
We’ve lived in Georgia for more than 10 years, and I’ve only been to the movies three times. Of course that may have as much to do with being older and retired as anything else.
Yes, life changes, and not all the changes are welcome.
That’s why it’s important to hang onto the things that matter to you.
Because Joni Mitchell really did get it right.
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.