As some of you know, I play recreation volleyball with a team. Some of us are newer to each other, while others of us have been playing together for several years. But we travel as a unit, picking up new players as need be to keep the season going.

We’ve been playing indoors and masked since September, so it was very exciting when we saw outdoor volleyball was an option once more. For the first time, we’re playing on the Mall, a few steps from the MLK Memorial near the Tidal Basin. Most of D.C.’s sand courts have been offline since the start of the pandemic — first because it was thought outdoor sports might be an illness vector and later because the National Park Service wanted to do some upkeep. (It just would have been so much handier if those had been concurrent decisions, rather than consecutive ones.) So we’re playing on grass for now, which I actually prefer. (I grow too much glass in my garden to feel excited about romping barefoot in D.C.’s parks.)

Today was our first match, which also coincided with the return of early March weather — biting cold and strong winds — that kept all of us in sweatshirts and guessing about the direction of hits and serves.

But in the end, none of that mattered — we were playing volleyball and playing it together!