Covid certainly slowed down the kind of evenings small groups or entire communities used to spend at pizzerias, and even now some people feel uneasy about gathering in crowded places. Our community hasn't had a night out at a pizzeria or restaurant, or celebrated a birthday away from home — that kind of experience outside our usual meetings — in quite some time.
I think the point of these outings, both for what our community has done and for all the communities like ours, is to give something to our parents more than to our young people: a taste of normalcy. "I can take my son, my daughter, out for pizza with my friends too!" I emphasize parents because they often bear the weight of other people's judgment and the pity that society shows them. When we share an outing together as a community, it helps break through those barriers people impose.
There are real challenges, of many kinds. First, there are the needs of the young people themselves. Then there's the difficulty of finding places that are truly accessible, welcoming, and where we won't be seated off in some remote corner of the restaurant — isolated, even though there are often many of us.
Our community has always had good experiences on these outings. We've been welcomed warmly, the spaces have been comfortable, the service attentive. What's always been beautiful about these evenings is simply being ourselves — bringing our joy and our laughter into spaces where other people are, mixing in, and sometimes really making an impression. When we leave these nights out, we all go home happy, glad to have been together, to have had fun. And without quite realizing it, we're witnesses to the world around us, showing people that we can be the friends next door, that we live our lives as human beings, full and complete.