Continuing the 1930s theme, I was greeted with delicious (park) contraband of the bubbly sort — a chilled mini-can bearing the name of an auteur’s daughter, I peered at half-masked faces, trying to decipher identities and find any sort of familiarity.

I quickly realized that this gathering would be an interesting experiment of addressing people that I may or may not know, and mentally prepared conversational gambits for a live action Guess Who with everyone changed by six months of stay at home.

Fortunately, our common interests, including a deep and almost desperate desire for connection made it easy. For networkers and event planners, it’s been an incredibly long seven months.

By the beverages, I found Great Performances’ contribution to the event: our newly designed bento boxes, beautifully packaged, safely prepared, and perfect for this type of dining.

Not far from our bento boxes, I spotted my dear colleague Linda Abbey, who I had only seen from the chin-up since March, and I was so grateful for this in person reunion. We shared a moment, and then made our way to the other guests.

There were about 35 guests, and it began to feel like a party. I made my way to Travis Pham, who orchestrated the whole evening with his company 360 Destination Management, and thanked him for bringing us all together again.