Since the beginning of the year I have felt myself slide from fine to pandemic fine to not fine at all. Just like everyone else, I have grown tired of wearing masks and standing in circles at the grocery store and not seeing the inside of the homes of my friends and families. And perhaps like everyone else, I have felt my anxiety become nearly all-consuming, a life lived at perpetual DEF-CON 1. I have found myself giving the same emotional shrift to a wide range of mostly insignificant issues, all to the end that I have stewed. A lot. I have even taken full advantage of the fact that there is no better time to stew than at 3 a.m., and if there is a better chaser to anxiety than insomnia, I don’t want to know it.

And then — lucky me! — the really bad things started happening. I nearly lost two loved ones to raging infections, and I watched the fallout of untreated mental illness on someone I love. These are not my stories to tell. But I will allow that there was stretch of weeks in February and March when it seemed certain that there would be fewer places to set at the table at Christmas.

It was during the first of the infection-related hospitalizations that the car got totaled. Chris and I were slowly driving in the parking lot next to the office when a giant SUV, driven by a notorious daredevil of a driver — a woman known to my entire office for her whipping into parking spaces with reckless abandon — backed into our red car from a distance of 6 to 8 feet. Her demolition skills were impressive: She hit both passenger side doors , the rear quarter panel, and the back bumper. The driver’s side remained intact. What was left is the sedan version of Two-Face, the Batman villain who began as Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent.

Before its transformation, this car began as Lucky. For nearly five years, Lucky transported us safely from Point A to Point B, but owning Lucky often felt like that episode of The Brady Bunch where Peter and Bobby discover the washed-up Tiki idol. Chris found the car used on Craigslist for an amazingly good price, and we suspect we know why. As a parting shot to the former owner, Lucky retained his wallet safely in a side compartment while we took a 10-day family vacation and Lucky stayed in airport parking.

With this car we have been through (in no particular order):

1. A dollar sign scratched into the hood.
2. A front bumper pierced by a driver who backed up and drove off.
3. A rear bumper scraped by a driver in a white car who backed up and drove off.
4. A new windshield occasioned by a roof tile that flew off in a hurricane. (Fortunately, the cost of the new windshield was below both our homeowners and car insurance deductibles.)
5. A failed timing chain following a 3-second message to drive the car moderately to safety — and then poof! Destroyed engine! (Fortunately, we were a few thousand miles out of the timing chain/engine recall period when this happened.)
6. The near-constant continuation of those 3-second messages even after the replacement of the timing chain and engine, messages that enjoy lighting up the car like Christmas lights — usually in the dark on the interstate in desolate stretches while I am driving alone.
7. Countless tires, which seem to succumb not just to road hazards, but also to piercing glances.

It is not a lemon. It is a car populated by a mischievous spirit. Is it any wonder then that it met its end, new tires and all, in a close-quarter backup only feet from its intended destination?

The bright side of a few terrible months has been an anxiety reset, or barring that, at least an anxiety triage. Not everything requires the same level of emotion and reaction. In fact, very few things warrant a DEF-CON 1 response. When confronted with the question, “Does this really matter?,” the overwhelming response is “Probably not.” Or, to draw from my recent experiences: Sepsis is a real problem. The need to replace a car is not.

I have enjoyed the sleep.

And I have enjoyed a few things that would not have happened absent the pandemic. A few weeks ago on a Thursday, my son called. Graduating from college and assuming a first job is always difficult. With COVID-related shutdowns, cold and wet weather, and social distance requirements, it has been difficult times a million. (There is apparently nothing like the journey of self-discovery that occurs in a 400 square foot apartment in a blizzard.) He sounded really lonely in that phone call, and when I called him around 8 p.m. that night under the pretense of forgetting something, he sounded even lonelier. After the second call, I texted that I could be in Philadelphia the next afternoon to spend the weekend with him.

It was a well-intentioned mother text that I figured would be promptly ignored or, at most, politely declined. Imagine my surprise when he accepted my invitation. I bought a plane ticket, packed a bag, and sourced an all-night purveyor of a COVID rapid test to comply with Pennsylvania’s entry requirements. (Pennsylvania did not enforce its entry requirements — just like Chris, my son, and the Urgent Care worker from Philly told me that they would not. But I could hardly ignore a lifetime of rule-abiding, even if my ever-widening cheap streak balked at paying $149 for the rapid test.)

What ensued was a weekend that will easily make my lifetime highlight reel. Friday night started with a walk downtown to Rittenhouse Square, past all sorts of public art, to find a band (Snack Time!) populated only with brass and drums and performing “Wanna Be Starting Something” on the street to a dancing crowd. At the Italian restaurant around the corner, I ordered the pizza bearing the restaurant’s name instead of the sensible salad that prudence advocated.

The next day — Saturday — we walked 13 miles around the city, and if there is anything left to see, it’s probably nothing good. It rained at first, and then the weather cleared, and by the time we stopped for cheesesteaks, it was perfect. There was a small Ferris wheel by the river, and as I faced Philly and my son faced Camden, I was so incredibly glad to be in that moment.

Of all the things we saw that day, the best was The Barnes, a museum I had never heard of. (In fact, I had demanded to go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, home of the steps from Rocky, but my son told me that I would like this other place better. He was right.) Dr. Barnes made a fortune in infection control in the early 1900s. He sent a childhood friend (an amateur painter) to Paris in 1912 with $20,000 with which to buy art. The friend then bought 30 paintings by a cadre of largely unknown and upcoming artists, like Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, and Renoir. Dr. Barnes sold his company in the spring of 1929, refused stock options, and demanded cash, which he did not place in a bank. He weathered the financial storm spectacularly and added to his collection. Dr. Barnes bought what he liked, whether that was Impressionistic masterpieces, folk art, Pennsylvania Dutch furniture, hand-forged hardware, or simply an eye-catching gewgaw. When Dr. Barnes died in 1951, his will left his art to a foundation, which was required to display everything in exactly the manner that he displayed it at the time of his death.

Here is a typical (and partial) wall in the museum:

There are no placards, for Dr. Barnes wanted the viewer to connect color, shape, and texture. There is no hierarchy of art; a Matisse sketch is under a Pennsylvania Dutch bowl. The place had either 121 or 151 Renoirs, more Matisse paintings than I had ever seen in a single place, and a Van Gogh collection of works that I had only seen in art history books. I wanted to cry. I wanted to move in. I completely got it.

Here was a rare gift of the pandemic: a mother’s last-minute offer accepted by a lonely child and a spur-of-the-moment trip resulting in unexpected sunshine, priceless art, good food, Snack Time!, and a whole lot of companionable walking. It made me realize what I had missed over the last year.

To that end, and to try to avoid missing even more over the next year, Chris and I got our first vaccinations today through a local hospital. The process was so ruthlessly efficient that I longed for that hospital to take over the postal service. But what really surprised me was the joy. There were so many happy people there that the place sounded like a cocktail party, with a steady buzz of conversation and punctuations of laughter. I drew a pediatric nurse, a fantastic choice for the administration of a shot, and despite the absence of juice and Danish ring cookies afterwards, it was largely painless and completely fine. I had a moment of community where I realized how much I love this city and the people who live in it, and there came a point when I was nearly overcome with emotion by the hope that this would one day be behind us.

And isn’t it about time?

ALC