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The concentric circles of the pandemic have closed on me. Starting in March, news of positive test results clamored through my social networks. Alarm bells rang ever closer: friends' families, then friends in my city, then my family. "No complaints," I told most people who asked about my well-being, "because nobody's died. That's the bar for this year."

My grandma contracted COVID-19 several weeks ago along with all but three of the 31 people who live in her nursing home. The virus zipped through the corridors, and most residents seemed to recover, grandma included. She was back to eating ice cream for a week or so.

A dozen are now dead. Grandma survived a few hours into December 26, one of the early departures among 1,365 Americans killed by the coronavirus that day.

"I told her in my head that she'd better not die on Christmas," my aunt said, "or I'd get her later."

I understood that wish, but I did not plan to post anything publicly about our experience. Then I listened to my favorite podcast, 99% Invisible. An episode from the spring offered a tribute to Michael Sorkin, an architecture critic and another pandemic victim. His list, "Two Hundred Fifty Things An Architect Should Know," reminds me of Crater Lake. Sorkin's simple directives, like the water in Oregon, appear shallow or obvious until your eyes adjust to the depths their clarity reveals.

You can read them all, but I recommend allowing Roman Mars, one of the best voices in radio, to speak to you some of these joys of living (start at 20 minutes). As a bonus, learn more about that sweeping, music-box backtrack, a song that moves both with the collectively dismal mood today and the heightened anticipation of a merrier, brighter 2021.

Photos + poems from around America on this 2020 expiration date.
 

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This newsletter was crafted on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank.