I understand I’m extremely lucky. People are dying; terror is everywhere; my generation is being asked to do things we never imagined. And I don’t mean Jared Kushner. As for me, my life is back where it started and on hold indefinitely.

What is to be done? Messages filter through the ether. It’s an interesting time. A reset. A time to take stock. No, thanks! I’d managed to set up my life in a way that I never have to take stock. My identity had become where I lived, what I did and who my friends were. I want to be able to realize and regret that later, not when it’s still so much fun. What’s called for is a meditative calm, to understand what we can and can’t control, the ultimate “be here now” moment. Well, how about this, Ram Dass? I don’t want to be here now, and you can’t make me.

At first, I decide to use this time to get fitter, stronger, to become not only impervious to illness, but something close to invincible. I hate running, but I downloaded an app to get me going. Running for 90 seconds at a time is perfectly manageable until I fall over during the walking part. This is not the cute, slapstick-style tumble of a girl in a romantic comedy. This is a full, heavy thump that smashes my phone and busts my knee open, accompanied by an old man’s wheezing shout. I pick myself up and look around for the old man who made that terrible sound. That old man … is me.

I limp home wondering what will happen to my dating life. I see the outline of what looks like a man in the distance and squint hopefully. He is eclipsed by the manure storage tank and as he emerges into the light, I see that he is my uncle. Not only related to me by blood, but happily married. I swear to myself by this time next year I’ll have a boyfriend. In fact, I decide, I’ll have a boyfriend and a husband. Yes, an adulterous married woman with deep-red hair and the scars of an athlete, that’s who will emerge from this pandemic.

Ten days in and it’s a Saturday afternoon. My father has built a beehive and harvested a huge crop of young spinach, and my mother has made a dozen pots of marmalade and sewed an actual quilt. I’ve never felt so useless in my life, and that’s saying a lot. Ideally, I would slump on the armchair in the kitchen and think sadly for a while, but Leo is sprawled across my favorite moping chair, pretending to be asleep. I blow on him and he tries to bite me, and then my mother tells me to leave him alone.