Life deals us the unexpected, and in 2020, the dealer was busy. As a scientist, I knew a pandemic was likely in my lifetime, but I did not expect it to arrive in the early months of 2020. I did not expect our homes to become schools and workplaces, and simple gestures like a handshake or a hug to become fraught with danger. I did not expect to attend 2020’s version of our dear friends’ annual holiday party on a video-conferencing platform called Zoom, an occasion that would lead my husband to don a suit for the first time in nine months. I certainly never expected that my family would leave New York City and live on a blueberry farm for six months, from March to September. Almost a year later, those early days of the pandemic are vivid in my mind.
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