Weston Philips was a collector by nature. He didn’t realize it until today, but it seemed to have been a constant for most of his life.  There was the boyhood coin collection, the football game programs, and then, one that was ongoing, the baseball scorecards, beginning with the Braves against the Phillies in 1971 and continuing up to the dog days of the Mariners’ dismal last season.  And here it was two days after the postponed and perhaps cancelled season opener and no baseball was being played.  No professional ball, no college, high school, or even Little League.  Yes, and that impacted yet another collection.

            Each working day Phillips would bicycle to work via the path around Green Lake.  The ride afforded him several delights.  At one point, at the edge of the lake, he often recorded photos of the sunrise on his iPhone.  The sun, rising and filtered through the morning clouds, appeared in a stunning variety of oranges, reds and yellows, variegated by an array of grays, blues and greens reflected in the lake.  He would snap his photos and share them via text with a small group of family and friends.  Leaving the lake, he would head up the hill behind the baseball field.  Many mornings he spied up to a dozen rabbits grazing in the outfield.

            Leaving the park, Phillips would coast down the hill toward the University, crossing the ship canal over the Fremont Bridge.  Some years before, the city had installed a counter at the bridge that would record the number of bikes that crossed each day.  Phillips noted the number and time, which he would then record on a chart posted on his office door.  He and his biking colleagues regularly recorded their numbers and times each day.

            The biking to work had stopped with the CoVid-19 quarantine, but Phillips did not miss it so much.  He walked his dogs to the lake each day, keeping the prescribed social distance of six feet from other humans, and could still take pictures of the sunrise.  He could walk to the ball field and look for the bunnies, but there was a specific spring ritual that he sorely missed.

            You see, for the last five or six years, starting in early March, baseball was being played at the ballfield, and part of his morning pleasure was finding baseballs in the grass and brambles behind the backstop and along his path.  There were not balls there every day, but when there were it was special delight.  He had arranged a pyramid of about 40 on his office desk.  Another 10 or so were stuffed in a jar on his table.  He had taken a dozen home for games of catch with his nephew.  But this spring there is no baseball and no baseballs.  Correction.  There had been one.  He found it smashed into the grate of a street drain on 85^th, its skin split and its yarn windings spewed out the side.

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Elena Philips didn’t mind social distancing at first. In fact, she already realized that her happiness relied on a decent level of alone time. Her armchair theory was that because she was an only child, she had an appreciation for spending time with only herself unlike any of her friends with siblings could.

So, a quarantine lifestyle was not so far from her preferred way of life. She made breakfast before she started work, instead of eating a granola bar at work. She could take her time between work and school, instead of rushing to beat traffic and find free parking. She could entirely clear off a to-do list (which was immensely satisfying). She could rearrange her apartment into every possible configuration so she could really know which one was the best. She could go for runs while it was still light outside. There were lots of bunnies sharing the path with her in the day time – sometimes she counted them. This habit made her smile – it reminded her of something her dad would do. There was a period of time where every family dinner included an update of how many different license plates Weston had spotted on the commute to and from work.

But Elena wasn’t a robot. She couldn’t live entirely isolated. She missed making people smile, she missed lunchtime conversations, she missed giving her friends looks when a classmate said something stupid, she missed arguing over board games, and she missed sharing meals.

But Elena was never one to realize her problems without addressing them head on. These challenges were not impossible to overcome, she just had to be more creative. There were no more birthday parties, so she sent her friend a sprinkle-covered Nutella mini-doughnuts. There were no more classrooms, so she made colorful group chats. There were no more board games, so she made her own version of Jeopardy for her friends to play.

Come Father’s Day, Elena couldn’t take her dad to do anything fun, or even get within 6 feet of him. But – she could hide 20 baseballs around the neighborhood for Weston to find.