Jake Hilkin was supposed to be in Charlotte this weekend. Michelle Piason was supposed to be on a trip to Mexico. Instead, at the start of Memorial Day weekend, they stretched out on blankets on the National Mall.

They were grateful to soak up the sunshine after a remarkably gray and rainy couple of weeks. “As long as the weather’s nice, you can’t complain too much,” said Hilkin, a Hill staffer.

But they also reflected on what they have been missing: baseball, weddings, just going to the bar for a drink. And as they look ahead at a summer of uncertainty, Piason wonders what D.C. will be like without so many of the season’s hallmarks.

“I don’t know if our pools are going to be opened, or what we’re going to be doing besides just sitting here,” Piason said.

Summer doesn’t officially start until June 20, when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky. With temperatures in the early 80s at the start of a three-day weekend, though, one could be forgiven for assuming that the season had already begun.

Besides, Memorial Day weekend has always been the unofficial start of summer, what with family cookouts and the opening of local pools and sales on patio furniture and the promise of more relaxation time ahead. But with the entire D.C. region still under stay-at-home orders as coronavirus cases remain at some of the country’s highest levels, all of that has been thrown into question.

In a non-pandemic universe, D.C.’s mayor would be making a literal splash this weekend. But the city won’t reopen pools until hitting stage three of its reopening plan (even then, visitors won’t find deck chairs, locker rooms, or pool equipment), and it remains an open question if they will open at all.

Nationals fans, fresh off last year’s exhilarating championship win, should be streaming into Navy Yard today to see the team take on the Marlins for a three-game homestand. Instead, it’s not clear if the team will return to Nats Park at all this summer.

The ferris wheel at National Harbor would be spinning with holidaymakers. But on Saturday, large metal fencing blocked pedestrians from strolling around the waterfront and the jumbotron reminds passersby to wear a mask, keep six feet of distance, and stay home.

And, of course, Memorial Day weekend would normally be filled with in-person tributes to veterans, with a parade parading down Constitution Avenue and Rolling Thunder thundering through town. Both of those events will be replaced by two-hour TV specials this weekend. The usual wreath-laying events at the country’s war memorials will instead be replaced by a prerecorded ceremony on Facebook. And an annual concert that has taken place for three decades on the West Lawn of the Capitol will instead live on as a broadcast on PBS.

While events have been canceled, postponed, or replaced by not-quite-the-same digital versions for months, it’s a reminder that the summer will be filled with such disappointments, over and over again.

On Saturday, Michelle Gutstein took her 4-year-old son to Alexandria’s harbor to enjoy one of the few public amusements still available: throwing crumbs to the ducks gliding by. The rest of her plans for Memorial Day are few and far between, just as they are for the rest of summer.

Her son was supposed to go to summer camp, but it has been canceled. “So we’re just going with the flow, just more of this,” she says. “I’m hoping regulations will loosen up a little bit and he can have playdates so I can go to work.”

Gutstein misses being with other other people, but even more than that, she regrets that her son isn’t able to socialize with other children his age.

“He should be playing with friends, learning how to share, climbing on playgrounds, swinging. And he can’t do that,” she says. “That’s what I miss the most — watching my son grow up the way that he should be.”

Others are grappling with losses more fraught than the typical sights and sounds of summer, including jobs and financial security.

Charles Wilson, a bus driver with the Maryland Transportation Authority, enjoyed a day with his family at Yards Park on Saturday, but couldn’t help thinking about his weekly hours that have been cut in half — from 40 hours to just 20.

“I think what people probably will miss the most is their money,” Wilson says. His cut in pay and the general malaise of sheltering in place has squashed his motivation to make plans, like celebrating birthdays and having family barbecues.

“This summer, we’re going to skip it,” Wilson added. “How can you celebrate birthdays or do family parties? How are you gonna hug and kiss? How you gonna shake hands? I feel like this whole year, we should pretend it didn’t happen.”

Many such milestones already haven’t happened.

“Some of our friends were supposed to have weddings this weekend — they got canceled,” says Pam as she hung out with her fiancé Brendan on the Mall (the couple declined to share last names for privacy reasons). They’re hoping their autumn wedding won’t suffer the same fate.

Over the long weekend, they would normally head for a beach — their favorite place. But while beaches in Delaware and Maryland, along with Virginia Beach, have already reopened, they feared having to navigate a crowd. Instead, they are planning a hike at Shenandoah National Park, which reopened Skyline Drive (and access to trails) this weekend.

“We’d like to spend this weekend with family and friends, but a lot of our family and friends are older, so we can’t really go see them,” Pam says.

On an Alexandria street that had been widened to accommodate for social distance, Rachel Schilling and Jeffrey Lotz said they, too, were happy they could still go out for a hike. But they would normally see family for a barbecue on Monday, and the absence of that cookout is a harbinger for what’s to come in the months ahead.

“Usually my family has a very large, reunion-like pig roast over the summer and we know that that’s not going to happen,” Schilling said.

And for those who typically plan to get away from Washington for a while, the long weekend didn’t provide any solace either.

Lisa and Steve, two State Department employees who declined to share their full names, planned to be in a different Washington this summer, but a trip to Seattle got canceled — as did their plans for a trip to the Caribbean and to visit Steve’s native England in June.

“That is obviously not in the cards right now,” Lisa said as they enjoyed some shade on a bench near the Mall.

Steve’s 61st birthday falls on the holiday weekend, but the most they are hoping for is to “get out and stay safe.”

The couple misses going to local restaurants and enjoying a few glasses of wine. Instead, they’ve been going for walks, driving in from Alexandria to stretch their legs around the Mall.

Diane and Pam, who declined to provide their last names, also found themselves going on a walk, strolling through the sparsely populated farmers market in Old Town Alexandria. From behind a brightly colored mask, Diane ticked off the ways that she might have been spending Memorial Day weekend, without a pandemic getting in the way.

“Usually I would go down to the beach or friend’s house off the Eastern Shore. Might go watch a parade, go to a farmer’s market that’s full and open, and visit friends,” Diane said. “And we don’t do that anymore. At least not yet.”

“I’d be somewhere else,” added Pam. “But I’m hesitant to travel, so this is it.”

Diane says she expects her summer to be similar to the last few months.

“I don’t think it will be like this forever,” she said. “I think there will be some ability to open up a lot more, but it will never go back to exactly the way it was.”