As it is with most people I know, making an excursion outside these days involves wearing a facemask. If not for my own sense of safety, I wear one because it puts others at ease. It’s not hard.

I have started accumulating different facemasks. Some are institutional looking, suitable for  hospital staff or factory workers that try to avoid breathing dust. My neighborhood dry cleaner makes masks out of interesting patterned fabrics.

I have been noticing what kinds of masks other people are wearing. Never a subscriber to Vogue or other style magazines, I’m amused by how masks have become a fashion statement of sorts, like ties were decades ago or eye glass frames might have been a few years back.

Of course, when I slip into the driver’s seat of my car, the mask usually comes off. I carefully remove the elastic bands from around my ears and place it on the passenger seat next to me, ready if the likelihood of a close encounter should increase.

It’s funny how being in my car has felt like I’ve expanded the bubble of my safe zone. It makes my boundaries balloon. It’s wonderful to be OUT IN THE WORLD. SAFELY.

Trying to minimize my chance for catching or spreading COVID, I have cut back on shopping trips, which are now only once a week, and, since using my credit card for almost everything, I don’t need to go to the bank often, so… I really look forward to any excuse to drive somewhere.

I enjoy taking short drives to nearby parks or any place where I can sit in my car, with the radio and air-conditioner on (not energy efficient, but it feels great) and watch ordinary comings and goings. This afternoon, at a local tennis court, I watched two players talking about the fundamentals of stroking a good return.

This makes me feel ALIVE.

The other day, from my car seat, I watched a high school track team, in short shorts and lightweight tees, run. I understood that they don’t know whether and when school activities might return, but I loved that they went about keeping in shape as if the return of fall extra-curriculars is a done deal.

On Lincoln Avenue, sitting in my parked my car, I have marveled at the way some restaurants have perfected curbside service to handle carry-out business. Oh my God, like a well-oiled machine, purchasing transactions are already handled during the ordering phase, and car greeters and runners bring heavy-duty bags of food to cars quickly.

When I’m in my car, I don’t need company. I have the radio, and, as a safe window to the world, I can see LIFE.

So many of us are wearing masks, but that doesn’t prevent our ability to see. People who complain about how harsh a restriction this is are really not exercising the incredible power they have. In following guidelines to wear masks, we only cut off our ability to see when we look away, and that’s a choice.

There is so much going on. Even now, life is a FEAST of things to see. Certainly, it is a FEAST for anyone who cares to look. I get energy from getting in my car and observing something I didn’t see the previous day, but I can take in so much on a walk, too.

The rough waters we have been floating in have gotten especially murky. Fear has become the norm. While there are serious things to face, we often turn away from life, from light. And light is just as present in difficult times as on your birthday when your friends treat you to lunch, and the waitstaff sings in your honor.

So, I have been thinking about what a “feast” is — now, in 2020.

Not a particular fan of Papa Hemingway, I love the title of his memoir, “A Moveable Feast.” The volume was assembled late in life after he found notebooks chronicling how he spent the twenties in Paris writing and drinking and hanging out with some of the most inventive minds of his era.

The book gives a nod to passion and the joie de vivre that comes from being exposed to new things, how you bring a heightened sense of awareness to everything when you’re making it up as you go along.

From inside the windshield of my car or while on walks, I can take the feast that fills my eyes anywhere I go.

Not dwelling on restrictions, but fully exercising the abilities you do have is no small thing.