A few weeks ago, on a random Wednesday morning, I selected from the closet a navy skirt with green apples on it. It was the first time I’d worn it since the spring of last year, and as I held the hanger in my hand, I grappled with the question that changing seasons always brings: Will it still fit?

I wish that warm weather brought even better questions, like: How many times will I walk on the beach next to someone I love? Or this: Will I sit in the backyard under the stars, talking late into the night with dear friends as cicadas whir? Or even: Will I get a slight sprinkling of freckles across my nose and onto my cheeks, so that when I look into the mirror, I can catch of a glimpse of my face as a little girl?

But no. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman pushing 52 views last season’s clothes with a bit of distrust, a potential let-down hanging innocently from a slender hook. So I will allow that this skirt — purchased around 2005 in a size that would make me hot-foot it far down the rack — actually fit. And right in the middle of my closet, I did a little dance, a little raise-the-roof combined with a little hip-shimmy. No matter that the waist was a little higher, the hips a little tighter than last year. It fit.

I remember that that began a particularly good day, although for the life of me, I cannot remember why. I think that was the day that I received in the mail a doctor’s appointment postcard I had addressed to myself. I had no memory of what led to this decision, but that was just fine:

That may have been the day I shopped a trifecta at the grocery store: toilet paper, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes.

I am certain that it was a few days after my daughter’s 21st birthday, a celebration that her friends made particularly meaningful with socially distant plans — even though her brother forgot to wake her up for the parade outside her window at 11:30 that morning. There was no fancy dinner, elaborate cake, and good manners out, just a lovingly prepared meal, a heart-shaped cookie, and fairly hilarious discussion in. This picture captures the mood:

And I think the day that I remember was the very day that my son took his last college exam in the empty office next to mine, and then let out a war-whoop and gave me a hug.

Life has gone on. While I have spent so much time fretting over the last 10 weeks, some things are undeniable. I have a wonderful family. I have a home. I have a job. I have plenty of food. I have lost no one I love to this virus. While the celebrations are very different, they are still celebrations.

It all got a little easier for me on that random Wednesday, for that may have been the exact day that I listened to a podcast discussing how people with lonely childhoods tend to fare better in the pandemic. I have parents who love me very much, and I never wanted for anything, but I am not kidding when I tell you that I had an awkward phase that lasted from age 10 until age 45. I remember feeling terribly isolated during the endless days of summer, with the only decision to make was whether to stay in the house or venture outside. Left to my own devices and with few distractions in the sweltering summer heat of small town Georgia, the days drug on and on and on.

Uncertainty is the pits, so when I realized that I had been in the middle of something like this before, it got a whole lot better. I outgrew those summers, and I will make it through this. But I will give those long summers something: They forced me to develop a rich inner life, which I suppose is the person I’m still trying to develop today.

My grandparents survived the Great Depression, a fact especially apparent every time I visited one of their homes. My grandmother would never throw away any empty yellow plastic tub of margarine, for there was always one more use to get from it. This irritated me as a child, for if I opened the wrong cabinet too quickly, the tubs would rain down on my head and clatter onto the floor. She made up for the occasional sneak attack by leaving out a plate of extra bacon strips every day during our visits, a fact that my younger brother and I still speak of with awe: There was bacon, on the counter, available for consumption without the requirement of frying or parental permission. We lived high on the hog indeed.

I can now sense the beginnings of my own yellow tub obsession. To recap my last six years: I survived the very bottom of the U-curve of human happiness, only to have a cancer diagnosis. I survived a cancer diagnosis, only to find myself in a global pandemic. Whether due to fear, uncertainty, anticipated need, or merely an empty cabinet, I find myself holding tightly onto my family, my friends, my dog, my savings, my creative endeavors. I have lost the drive to take over the world. I now think it’s a great day when the little food pantry down the street is filled or when I can look at a blank canvas, envision what I want to paint, and rush it with a brush and pigment, delighted to embrace an old friend.

This will be an odd summer, to be sure, and it may be an odder fall still. And I think I asked myself the right questions earlier. There will be beach walks, and friends, and stars, and cicadas, and freckles. There may be physical distance, but there will be emotional closeness. I continue to walk fast, then faster, past the person I was ten or 15 years ago, a person who had no real idea of what was important.

If that person saw me now, would she even recognize me? I like to think so. If nothing else, I can wear the same skirt, the navy one with the green apples on it. And that counts for something these days, too.

ALC