The lilacs are in full bloom and the pollen is turning everything yellow. So, it must look odd that I’m carrying an arm full of packages with Santas and wreaths all over them. In this strange year, Christmas is late. Very late.

When I meet Quint inside a restaurant for the first time in 14 months, he hands me a bag.

“We didn’t get to do Christmas,” he says.

The bag has a hedgehog decked out in an ugly holiday vest and jaunty Santa hat. I tuck the bag under my seat and we order drinks and food. People are coming in and out of the place and the staff is hurrying from one area to the next. It’s all so familiar yet given the circumstances of the past 14 months, it’s still kind of unfamiliar.

A waiter passes by with a tray of drinks. A couple enters the room and cries out to another couple that they know, saying how good it is to see them. A woman’s phone rings and she picks up. “Hello? Oh hiiiiiii! Are you on your way?” she shouts, trying to be heard over all of the other noise.

Quint looks around, his face crumpled with confusion. “It’s so...normal,” he says to me.

“I know. Weird, isn’t it?”

When things shut down in March 2020, they shut down with a resounding slam. Suddenly everything was closed and social interaction pretty much stopped. Everybody out of the pool!

The surprising thing is that things have ramped up just as quickly. Suddenly there are calls and texts and emails raining down like a summer squall. Everyone wants to get together with everyone else. Can you blame us? It’s been a long, dreary 14 months of isolation. Now we’re all like prizes spilling out of a busted piñata. We’re all free-falling and bouncing around.

It’s exhausting.

This isn’t a complaint, it’s an observation. I’m a bit of an introvert, despite outward appearances, so when put in social situations, I can get overwhelmed. I definitely need a battery recharge afterwards. I was always this way, but I feel it even more now. After months of solitude, I find I’m not used to being around people at all. I’m certainly not used to crowds.

I look around the room as someone else shouts a greeting upon entering. Everything is bright, loud, and raucous.

After dinner and a drink, Quint suggests we go across the street to the Pub. Just like we used to do.

“Don’t forget your bag!” he reminds me.

“I have stuff for you, too. I can zip home, get it, and meet you at the Pub,” I say.

And so, that’s how I end up walking downtown on a late spring day with an armful of red and green.

At the Pub, we order drinks and open gifts, right there at the bar. People keep asking, “Whose birthday is it?”

We look at them in mock shock as if we think they’re crazy. I hold up a shiny tinsel bow and say, “It’s not a birthday, it’s Christmas!”

“Christmas!” someone says. “Little late, aren’t ya?”

“It’s COVID Christmas. Better late than never!” Quint replies and everyone laughs.

I expected that the noise and commotion that usually occurs at the Pub would be overpowering. However, I’m more affected by it than I anticipated. I’m completely out of practice when it comes to talking over other conversations and I’m even worse at hearing someone else over other conversations.

“What?” I keep saying to Quint as he makes jokes about opening presents. “What?” I keep saying to other people as they make jokes about us opening presents.

When I get home I’m dragging my feet and my bag of holiday cheer. My brain is a mass of unresponsive goo and if it began to seep out of my ears, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s weird to be normal and I’m completely spent by all of the socializing, but that’s okay. After all, it’s Christmas.

Juliana Gribbins is a writer who believes that absurdity is the spice of life. Her book Date Expectations is winner of the 2017 Independent Press Awards, Humor Category and winner of the 2016 IPPY silver medal for humor. Write to her at jeepgribbs@hotmail.com. Read more of her columns at www.zip06.com/shorelineliving.