Yesterday was probably the best day I’ve had since COVID came to Indiana. It’s definitely the most time I spent among other people since early March. But it was all done in a low-exposure way.

About a week ago, Madeline suggested we have a girls day. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, but she wanted to spend a day together. How do you say no to that? I know that the day will come very soon where she’ll want to spend time with anyone but me. So I suggested yesterday, which is not a work day because of today’s Fourth of July holiday. We started talking about activities and quickly developed a plan: breakfast out at a restaurant with outdoor dining, The Children’s Museum, swimming at the JCC, Chinese restaurant delivery for dinner, and Hamilton at home in the media room. On Thursday, Madeline told Ellie about the plan, and she decided to join us.

We planned to go to a neighborhood restaurant that has a nice patio. I overslept a bit, which meant we got started about ten minutes later than I’d hoped. Which meant we got to the restaurant after it opened rather than a few minutes before. (For some reason, they’re not opening until 9 am during the COVID crisis, which means it’s busy when it opens.) When were a block away from the restaurant, we could already see the crowd of people waiting at the host station. There were dozens of maskless people standing there waiting for a table, and the patio tables were not appropriately spaced. I drove right on by.

We ended up at another favorite breakfast place about twenty minutes from our house. It’s in a strip mall, but they had significantly increased their outdoor seating capacity, so we were able to get a seat right away, and we were a good six feet from anyone else there. We had a great breakfast, but Ellie was really tired and decided she wanted to go home rather than go with us to The Children’s Museum.

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is one of my favorite places in the world. Its temporary COVID closing has been one of those things that feels just so wrong. We’ve been members for about fifteen years, and now that we’re able, we’re donors too. And how lucky that we live ten minutes from the world’s largest children’s museum. It’s so big now that you really can’t do it all in one day. And it’s always changing. Our family has enjoyed it well into the girls’ tweens.

Right now, the museum is open to members only. You have to make a reservation for a certain day, affirm that you don’t have COVID symptoms and haven’t been exposed to someone who does, and wear a mask (babies under two and people with medical conditions are exempt). So we felt like we would at least try it out, and if it seemed unsafe, we would just go home. Instead, we stayed for hours. The Museum did a really great job of balancing safety and convenience. For example, all but a couple exhibits were open, but each exhibit closed down after 90 minutes (on a rolling basis throughout the day) for cleaning. They would give everyone in the exhibit a five-minute warning, then when everyone had exited, they’d put up some signs that it was closed for cleaning. An army of employees would pull out the cleaning supplies, and a while later it would reopen. We didn’t really find this inconvenient. If an exhibit was closed, we just moved on to a different one and came back to it.

On the other hand, there were many pieces of each exhibit that were not available at all. Anything that is typically played with by a lot of children at the same time — the digging area at Dinosphere, the play food in Take Me There Greece, etc. — was put away. However, Madeline was able to do some hands-on activities of the type that are used by children individually. For those, the Museum had put cleaning stations right next to them with cleaning wipes and hand sanitizer, plus signs that asked the user to clean the item before and after using it. I never observed anyone ignore the request.

The biggest inconvenience from cleaning came at the carousel. The Children’s Museum hosts a beautiful antique carousel that dates back to 1917. There’s almost always a line to ride it. This time, there was a very spaced-out line, and the carousel was operating at about 50% capacity. Every other row of animals (in addition to the horses, the carousel has a lion, a tiger, giraffes, goats, etc.) had covers (think horse blankets) indicating they were off limits. The rows that were operating were limited to one family. And, rather than opening the gate and letting everyone run for their favorite animal, each family was escorted to a row, loaded farthest to nearest to maintain social distancing. Riding was normal. Then, everyone was escorted off the ride (again, to maintain social distancing), and the workers cleaned every available animal, whether it had been ridden or not. This, as you can imagine, led to a very slow line. We probably waited 20 minutes or more. But as Madeline said, “You can’t go to the Children’s Museum and NOT ride the carousel!”

We also went outside for a very short time to the Sports Legend Experience. The only difference there seemed to be that we were instructed to wipe our basketballs, soccer balls, etc., with disinfectant wipes before and after use. They were probably also limiting the numbers of people on each field, but since it was 91 degrees out the area was barely inhabited anyway.

The best part of this trip to the Museum, for me, was that the staff had time to really engage with us. Since the number of visitors was purposefully reduced, we could have real conversations without taking more than our share. I learned the correct pronunciation of “crinoid,” looked closely at dinosaur’s legs and feet to determine which was the fastest, spoke with a real paleontologist working on a real dinosaur bone, and discussed the Terra Cotta Warriors at length. Madeline was intellectually curious and asked a lot of great questions that really took advantage of our hosts’ knowledge. What an amazing visit!

After we left the Museum we came home to change clothes and then drove to the JCC for our reserved time slot. The outdoor pool is open, but you can’t just drop in. Members have to sign up for a 90-minute time slot. You can arrive any time during your slot, but you have to leave when the slot is over. In between each slot, they close the pool area and disinfect every surface. I think the pool, which normally would hold hundreds of people, is limited to 100 people at a time. We didn’t have any trouble staying six feet away from others. Madeline saw a friend from school, and while she played with him, I rode around the lazy river half a dozen times or more. It was bliss!

That ended the active part of our day, and we were both happy to hop in the shower when we got home. We ordered dinner delivery from a local Chinese restaurant, and when it arrived we cued up Hamilton on Disney+. Andy and Ellie joined us for three hours of Broadway magic. Seriously, we’ve seen two different casts perform Hamilton, and one was really good. But the original Broadway cast was really amazing, and it’s easy to see why no one could get tickets for so long. I know that each time I’ve watched the show I’ve missed a million little details, and I look forward to watching the same performance again and again to catch all those pieces.

So yesterday was a truly great day. It would have stood out at any time, but coming in the middle of so much social isolation, it really brought joy. I already wish I’d taken more pictures!