This past Shabbat was the first time that we spent it with friends outdoors and indoors in masks. I hadn’t realized just how much I missed quality time with friends until that moment when we were sitting around just chatting in my mother-in-law’s backyard. I hadn’t seen any friends in-person in over a year. This first Shabbat meeting during the pandemic was also special because it was a Jew of color meetup. For the first time in a long time, I was surrounded by more black people than white people. More people of color than otherwise. I could tell it was really special for the black girls who got to play together. My children were too shy and too young to realize just how special our little meetup was. I look forward to future meetups, in masks of course.