I’m 39 today.

Last year, my friends took me out for birthday dinner and we tried not talking about what we couldn’t help talking about. The virus was here, now. Schools were shutting down. Employees were being sent home to work. The world as we knew it was about to change forever. We slurped our Tom Yum Pho with bewildered eyes and questions none of us would ever be able to answer.

A year later, I’m standing over my kitchen stove boiling sap into maple syrup and still thinking about the innumerable, unanswerable questions. How long will this last? How many will we lose? Could life ever be normal again?

I have been extremely/overly cautious this last year, but even with all my THINKING and DECISIONS and PREVENTION and PRECAUTIONS, here I am, quarantined because of a recent exposure. A quick stop off at a friend’s house and a hug I didn’t say no to will turn into weeks of waiting and wondering.

When I think back to that dinner last year with my friends, I feel like I’m looking in on another life. We were girls around a table of Thai food, shoulder to shoulder, living among one another, breathing each other’s air. We were so sickeningly rich in the closeness and togetherness I ache for in these lean months. There was open-mouthed laughter and tasting each other’s dinners and lingering around. There were smiles and unmuffled words and hugs without hesitation, and dammit, I cannot stop crying about who we were before. We were grown women, but we were babies. We stopped by each other’s houses. We rode in cars together. We let our kids play with one another. Tell me, what didn’t we have?

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