Its first iteration was what I called, variously, my Pandemic Porch Paradise, or Cozy COVID Café.  I live in a condo complex, and I have a perfectly nice little covered front porch. My kitchen windows look out onto it, and I really enjoy watching the birds that come to the feeder I have hanging there. But I’ve never spent much time sitting out there at all. That changed with the pandemic.

            During the summer, one friend or another would come by occasionally, and we’d sit out on my porch, six or more feet apart, masked, for a chat. Even so, these occasions weren’t so frequent, because, mostly, I was getting together with friends outdoors in parks, or on their front stoops, or at ice cream stands where we could easily distance.  Then there came the very warm early-fall day when a friend was going to come over for mid-afternoon tea and pie on my porch. I decided to set up a nice spot for us, with pretty kitchen towels over our individual low porch tables, and nice plates and teacups and napkins. I even swept up all the fallen birdseed! Then I realized that the sun was hitting the porch at just the right angle that it would be right in our eyes and also make us really hot. We needed a sun shield.

            I remembered the gorgeous batik-fabric sheets that my sister and nieces had made me for my Reiki table. So, I brought those outside and duct-taped them up to the front roof edge of the porch. Success! And it wasn’t just that the jolly burgundy and orange fabrics created shade.  Sitting there with our tea and cherry pie, my friend and I felt like we’d been transported to some snazzy street café in a distant land. In the blink of an eye, my boring condo porch became my Pandemic Porch Paradise, my Cozy COVID Café… 

            That’s what I called it, but what it had actually become was a space of joy. (My Jolly Joy Joint, maybe?) It seems to me, reflecting on it now, that I achieved this by bringing elements out to the porch that feel soothing and comforting and homey.  Tea and sweet snacks are something my friends and I regularly share. Reiki, too! I think that having the sheets I use during my Reiki sessions hanging up outside with us lent a particular coziness and sweetness to the atmosphere. It was a way we could continue to feel enveloped in that loving, healing energy, even though the pandemic had put a stop to our hands-on Reiki sessions for each other.  

            Over the next couple of weeks, I added more elements that carry joyful associations for me: some string lights and candles…. plus yoga blankets, as the autumn weather began to settle in.  But as the air temperature began to drop, I recognized that my Porch Paradise would soon have to reckon with winter.

            Now, I have as much super warm outerwear as the next Bay Stater. Even so, “cozy” is not a word I associate with a condo porch exposed to the whipping winds of a Western Massachusetts blizzard, batik sheets or no batik sheets. But don’t think that I was even remotely considering retreat into a winter of solitude and nothing but Zoom teatime chats. No! As I sat huddled on the porch under my yoga blanket a month ago, eating a take-out dinner with a friend who’d driven up from Connecticut, my inner warmth may have been seeping out of me, but my determination was not. I resolved that I would NOT allow the pandemic and winter conspire to rob me of in-person meetings with my friends! So, I turned my determination not to stocking up on more down coats or fur-lined hats, but to creating a space where I could continue to meet with my friends safely and in at least relative comfort and warmth.

            My single-car garage seemed the perfect (and only!) choice. If we left the garage door open for ventilation and added some space heaters, it should work, I reasoned. It would be easy to distance sufficiently if one friend came over. We could probably even manage three of us, in a triangle formation. In my mind’s eye, I saw us sitting there, in masked, distanced bliss, lifting our masks to sip on warming tea or hot chocolate, and satisfying our stomach rumblings with tasty snacks or take-out meals. We’d chat around a heater, definitely with blankies, since, hey, this would still be Massachusetts in winter, and the garage door would be open…

            The heating question turned out to be easy to solve. After researching options, I went with two small, portable tower infrared heaters that were very reasonably priced. I decided against heaters that have fans, because … well …COVID. It didn’t seem a great idea to have heaters blowing air all over the place, even with the garage door open. Maybe I’m over-cautious, but the infrared heaters seemed like a safer option. I ended up buying two. Since they heat what they’re facing, instead of warming up the air, you really need one per person, even if they oscillate, like mine do.

            I’ll admit quite readily that I could easily have stopped there and made do with just these heaters and the blankies I already had. I mean, really. If the goal was to be able to sit in a well-ventilated space with my friends and stay warm, then I now had everything I needed to achieve that. But that wasn’t good enough for me. Because I had no intention of settling for just “warm enough”. I wanted “paradise”.

            It became painfully obvious that I still had a long way to go toward reaching this goal as soon after I hung up string light curtains across two of the bare white garage walls. The genuinely festive lights did move the “coziness” needle ever so slightly in the right direction. But they created much less of an effect than they had on my porch paradise, because I was in my garage. And my garage, naturally, contains all the usual garage-y things: garbage and recycling pails, a slightly rusted tall storage shelf, a rolling tool chest, plus brooms and other paraphernalia hanging on the wall. As well as a cold cement floor. Sigh.

            You have to realize that I’d tackled the garage with a vision in my head of how I wanted “Club COVID”, as I started out calling it, to look. My goal was to replicate the effect I’d created on my porch. But as I looked at the stark, pitiful contrast of string lights against white garage walls, I felt a twinge of disappointment. “This is not paradisical,” I thought, frowning.  True, I still had my gorgeous sheets to hang up.  But they were small, and a vast amount of garage wall space would remain exposed. But I resolved, once again, to not be deterred. I would not give up on “paradise”!  

            Until I started writing this post, I hadn’t interrogated the stubbornness of my determination to achieve paradise in my garage.  But now I see clearly why I didn’t want to create a space that would meet only our need for free-flowing air and physical warmth. I wanted to create a space that would bring warmth to our hearts, too. The garage’s “paradise” element needed to include the tasty snacks and décor accoutrements that would help us all feel comforted and soothed, the way we had done on my porch. The way we had done during pre-pandemic times.

            That’s what was key to me, I see now.  I wanted to invite people into a space that would transport us to another realm – one of happiness and joy. I envisioned it as a space we could enjoy on its own merits, rather than experience as a pale, disappointing substitute for the welcoming spaces we’ve created inside our homes. I did not want our surroundings to be a constant reminder of why we were meeting in a garage in the first place. I wanted us to forget that it was a garage. That’s why the heaters and blankies would not be sufficient. And so I got to work.

            Part of the transformation involved jettisoning the words “COVID” and “Pandemic” from my club’s name. Now it’s simply Garage Club. That’s its nickname. Its official name (think American Kennel Club) is Club Joy. My friends who heard about it first still mostly call it Club COVID, and someone referred to it as “your COVID Cave” yesterday. That struck me as hilarious, for some reason. But mostly, folks have begun following my lead. We leave the pandemic outside, linguistically and physically.

            And oh my, I think it’s really taken shape. It finally corresponds to my vision. It makes me smile. It’s silly and lighthearted and decorated with a variety of colors and textures and nature scenes. I’ve also incorporated some of the fairy house elements I created in years past, along with fairies a friend gave me last year. These sit atop three painted wooden shelves that adorn one wall and hold not only the rolled-up blankies, but also tea cups and teaspoons and a variety of tea bags. They’re self-service, so I don’t have to hand them to my guests. Napkins in a basket. Dried flowers in a metal can. Votive candles in sparkly holders. And snacks. And a folding wooden screen to shield us from seeing the garage-y elements. Oh – and shout out to the Chicago Canvas Company for the colorful tarps on the floor!

            My friends all seem excited about it, too! One person, upon hearing about the Club, texted me, “Can we have liquor?” “It’s BYOB,” I replied. When another friend heard about the alcohol policy, she mused that she could bring over a bottle of red wine. I told her she could have her own shelf and leave the bottle there for future visits. A third, when I mentioned this idea of a system of personal shelves to store your favorite snacks, declared that she’d want hers stocked with peanut M&Ms. (She came for a visit this weekend, and that’s exactly what she found on one of the shelves…) The very first visitor to the Club said that she hopes to come back when the string lights will show up more against the tapestries behind them. (No more bare white garage walls!) We agreed that drinking a late afternoon cup of hot cocoa as the lights twinkled around us would be very cozy and comforting.

            So, joy is already beginning to seep into the Club. Along with some unexpected and poignant surprises. One of my neighbors who popped by to see what I’d done with the place settled in for a visit. As we chatted, I saw her gazing over at the fairy houses, and smiling. She said that they reminded her of the creative endeavors of her best friend, who’d passed away back in the winter. As she told me about this woman and her sculptures, her face shone. I was so touched by that. I’m sure I would have really liked her friend.

            Certainly, there are things to tweak. My friend who favors the peanut M&Ms noted, quite correctly, that the heaters can make you feel like a rotisserie chicken. (And no, we’re NOT going to be cooking chicken this way at the Club, just in case you wondered!) And it’s clear that we’re going to have to experiment with chair placement, so that whoever’s sitting nearest the open door doesn’t freeze when the wind comes up.  But, overall, I feel that Garage Club is a success – if by “success” I mean that folks come by and sit for a while and share some tea or seltzer and a fun snack, and just smile and joke and laugh. In fact, that’s precisely what I mean by “success”. It feels to me like the Club is all about lightening our hearts. I’m feeling so grateful that I had this garage to transform, and a bit of money to fund the transformation.

            To all of you who visit this gathering space in my garage, whether in person, or by reading this post, I want to say the following:  Go ahead and call “Garage Club” whatever you want. Make up a new name that fits your vision or mood. Call it something different each time you think of it or mention it to someone else. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It doesn’t matter whether the space is created by me or by you, in some fabulous way I can’t imagine (but would love to hear about…) What matters is the underlying essence of whatever Club we might create:  At its heart, each one is a Joy Machine. So, go ahead. Turn yours on and fire it up. Let it pump out the joy.