Post-Lockdown, the Fun Activities Finally Start to Happen

Blog # 16

In the spring of 2021, after residents were becoming fully vaccinated in my active-adult community in southeast Florida, things were finally starting to open up, and the activities I had read about in the online brochure back in the early days of 2020 could really begin to happen.

When I had first learned about the Tuscany Bay development back in February 2020, before we all knew that the COVID pandemic was going to be a game changer for the world, I was excited about starting my new life in a fun, resort-like community for people 55 and over. Tuscany Bay was touted as a “summer camp for adults” by real estate agents. As a tennis player and budding pickleball player, I was happy to find a community where these courts would be right in my neighborhood, along with other recreational activities, a swimming pool, and a big clubhouse.

Because I was newly divorced and planning to move somewhere totally new, I wanted a place where it would be easy to make new friends. I also wanted to be safe as a single woman living by herself. The gated communities of south Florida had everything I would want.

Here is what I thought I would be getting upon purchasing my home in Tuscany Bay:

“The 22,000 square-foot clubhouse functions as the activity hub. Exercise and fitness opportunities are numerous. Indoors, these include a fitness center with aerobics studio where residents can work out by themselves or participate in aerobics, yoga and Tai Chi classes. After a great workout they can relax in the sauna. When it is time to relax and socialize, the clubhouse delivers as well. A billiards room and a performance center for entertainers provide welcome diversions. The clubhouse also features an arts and crafts studio as well as a library.

“Outdoors, residents can swim in the heated pool or soak in the spa, play an invigorating game of tennis on the six Har Tru tennis courts, or take it back a notch with a game of bocce ball or shuffleboard. Pickleball courts, a putting green and recreation pavilion with a wet bar is also available. Tuscany Bay also has a two-and-a-half mile exercise path that winds throughout the neighborhood.”

I read about the clubs available in my new community — tennis club, pickleball club, golf club, women’s club, book club, chorus, “Rounders” club (for residents who lived in Florida year-round) — as well as the numerous activities that included happy hours, weekly barbecues by the pool, movie nights, art classes, a New Year’s Eve celebration, and “Show Time” (where a variety of entertainers were brought in to perform on the clubhouse stage).

It all sounded like so much fun. So I put an offer on an end-unit “villa” home near the clubhouse and pool, flew down to close on my new house in June 2020, and moved in a month later.

But in July 2020, nothing was open, of course. COVID had changed everything. The clubhouse stood empty and dark, the clubs were all inactive, and the fun social activities like happy hours and pool barbecues were all cancelled for the foreseeable future.

A few things were still operational, but with limits, as was the case everywhere around the country. The swimming pool was open for limited hours on weekdays, and only to 20 residents at a time. A masked hired guard sat at a table with a large bottle of hand sanitizer and a sign-in sheet. Everyone entering had to stay six feet apart both in and outside the pool. All the pool chairs and tables that I had seen in the online photos were gone. And the hot tub was restricted only to people of the same household at a time.

At our recreation grounds, the tennis and pickleball courts were open, but only for a few monitored hours in the morning, and also to residents only, no guests. The first time I showed up, I had to bring my driver’s license, to show that I was on the residents list. We had to schlep our own chairs there for sitting in between games, and these were placed six feet apart. The water fountains were turned off, and no social events or league play was allowed for the tennis and pickleball players.

It would be a lot harder to make friends here than I had originally thought. None of the social events I had planned for were going to be happening. Even the community’s welcoming committee rep, a friendly woman named Maryanne, had to leave the welcome tote bag full of info for me at the end of my driveway and wave from afar. Everyone in Tuscany Bay was taking the spread of COVID very seriously. I soon found out that three residents had caught the virus early in the pandemic and died, including a married couple. The HOA board wanted to make sure that nothing like that happened again.

Walking my dog around the neighborhood, I rarely saw other people, and if I did, we made sure to be masked and on sidewalks across from one another. Some people waved or said hello, but it was not going to be easy to make friends. It would be an effort. But of course I understood why, and I wanted everyone to be safe.

This went on for several months. Summer turned to fall, with no activities happening beyond the pandemic-style tennis I had been playing, and then winter came. The much-lauded New Year’s Eve party with musical entertainment was off the calendar for the first time in years. Everybody was staying in their own homes, trying to remain healthy, and waiting for the vaccines to be available.

In January 2021, those over 65 were able to start getting the COVID vaccine, and hope was on the horizon. Even though securing the shot was challenging for many seniors — with either hours-long car lines in parks and sports stadium parking lots or difficult-to-access online registrations on the Publix store website — it was finally starting to happen. After those over 65 and with underlying health conditions were vaccinated, came the rest of us.

As the residents here began to get fully vaccinated that late winter and early spring, there was talk about things starting to open up in Tuscany Bay. First, the pool’s hours were extended and they no longer had a capacity limit and sign-in sheet. Then the outdoor furniture appeared at the pool and adjacent veranda as well as by the tennis and pickleball courts. I had never seen it before! Water fountains and other things were soon operating again.

Our clubhouse opened its doors, and the gym within it became available in early April. We had to make appointments to use the gym, with only two slots open per hour, and every other piece of machinery was taped off. But still, after living here all these months, it was good to finally get in and see the gym.

Masks were coming off, and people were finally starting to mingle again.

In early June, the HOA board held a welcome breakfast in the clubhouse for all the new residents who had moved in since the start of the pandemic lockdown. It was held in the largest, most elegant room, the one with the stage, and it was set up very nicely for the event. It felt so strange after months of isolation to finally get inside the clubhouse and see what it was like in there. We sat at festively decorated tables and helped ourselves to a breakfast buffet of food along with coffee and other drinks. After the board president welcomed all of us and gave us information about living in Tuscany Bay (where I had been living for 11 months already!), there were representatives from each club who came up to the microphone and spoke about the activities that would soon be happening. We also got a tour of the rest of the clubhouse.

So life as I had pictured it in this “summer camp” for adults was finally, slowly, coming to fruition. I planned to join the Rounders Club, the Women’s Club, and the Tuscany Bay Chorus. I would try canasta lessons in the multipurpose room. Once the women’s tennis program was able to start participating in league play again, I planned to play on a couple of teams. Guests were now allowed into the clubhouse and to use the community amenities. And when the happy hours and pool barbecues and beginners pickleball were back on, I would be happy to participate.

That summer I started to go to club meetings and help on the planning committees for some social events. First up we had a Fourth of July party, and it was surreal to see people there milling around the pool, eating, drinking, chatting, and having fun like any normal day. It seemed more like a summer scene from 2019 or before. We hadn’t been able to do this for so long, and it felt strange, but it also felt great.

I signed up for a jigsaw puzzle competition night with a four-person team of friends, and when that event rolled around, our team competed well and we won! We had practiced our strategy in advance, and it paid off.

The Women’s Club also was planning a big Labor Day event in a couple months, and I was on the committee to help plan the festivities. I got tapped to create online flyers for that event and others, and I was starting to feel like I really belonged here. The “active” part of my active-adult community was rolling along…

But then, on the way to a full community opening, something reared its ugly head and stopped us in our tracks. Its name was Delta.

By mid-August, COVID cases were surging again, as the very contagious new variant quickly spread throughout Florida, in Palm Beach County, and even within the community of Tuscany Bay, where we had let our guard down. Our HOA board started reporting on the case numbers within our gates, and the number of breakthrough cases climbed to at least 21, one of whom was hospitalized with pneumonia (a lovely woman with COPD and only one lung) and another who subsequently died (a man who was a cancer patient). The situation was once again very grim.

Our board started to reverse direction. Non-residents were now no longer allowed to go to social events or use community amenities. People who played tennis daily in Tuscany Bay but didn’t own a home here had to stop coming. Although residents could continue to use the clubhouse, we had to wear masks inside. The indoor happy hours were cancelled — and it didn’t help that word got around that an unvaccinated woman had come to a happy hour bearing food and no mask that summer, despite the Delta surge. The board was not allowed to ask about residents’ vaccination status (thanks to our COVID-denying Florida governor). And even though it was estimated that maybe 95% of our residents were fully vaccinated, the booster shot was not quite ready yet and the majority of people, including our cautious board, were worried about the breakthrough cases all around us.

Our latest HOA meetings — now once again virtual instead of in person — got contentious as people argued about COVID and what precautions should and should not be taken. Residents were frustrated. It was really discouraging, to be back here again. One by one, email bulletins arrived in our inboxes throughout August, cancelling events that we all had been looking forward to.

Once the Labor Day party I was helping to organize was cancelled out of “an abundance of caution,” I decided to fly up to the DC area, where COVID cases weren’t nearly as bad as in Florida. My dog and I spent the last week of August and the first three weeks of September in an extended-say hotel in Vienna, VA, where I saw family and friends and waited out the Delta invasion in the South.

When I returned at the end of September 2021, people were getting their booster shots and things were becoming not as COVID dire in South Florida. The case numbers were going down in the area, and it was much better in our community. Gradually, Tuscany Bay started to open up again, though there were some changes. A newly created happy hour (“Sunset Sundays”) was now being held outside on the pool veranda, sometimes with live music provided by resident musicians. Non-residents were not yet allowed back at events, although that changed in the coming weeks for outdoor activities. Our Women’s Club shifted to planning a Halloween party outside, instead of the indoor/outdoor Labor Day event that had gotten punted earlier. We had a band playing (photo). We were moving on.

We now have poolside barbecues, pickleball match cheering sections, and competitive tennis with other communities. I have started going to indoor Chorus practice (though wearing masks) and art classes with a resident art teacher. We had a community meeting to discuss our options for indoor exercise classes, as people hope to get back to such things as yoga, aerobics, and Zumba, my personal favorite. Those will be held in the indoor group exercise room, but with smaller numbers of participants than two years ago.

The Women’s Club had our annual holiday luncheon at an event hall with a band and dancing. The community New Year’s Eve bash in the clubhouse is back on the schedule, though scaled back from what it used to be. A karaoke night is on the horizon. And there will be musical shows again on the clubhouse stage in January through March, but with a smaller maximum capacity than seen in previous winters.

I have made several new friends here and I am cautiously optimistic about what we’ll all be able to do in the near future in this community. I know that things can close down again with little warning. I am used to the ups and downs now, and I have no regrets about buying a home in Tuscany Bay. I realize the board wants us to be safe in these uncertain times, and nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen. We’ll just see how it goes.

And, oh yeah, there is another variant heading our way: Omicron. Buckling up for the ride….

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