covid

May 3, 2020May 17, 2020

Before an Ignorant Army

Arlo, my three-year-old son, picked the miniature book from the shelf, I imagine, because it scaled him to an adult size. He didn’t know that it was a collection of poetry by young men who were killed in the First World War. He brought it to the dinner table and issued his most effective command, “Read it!”

April 8, 2020May 18, 2020

Loss Adjustment

Two weeks ago, I voluntarily self-quarantined with my wife and our toddler when they came back from visiting family in France. I had always imagined an emergency, a crisis, to be filled with panic, but these slow, thick days feel more like the quiet that settles in the wake of a death. It feels like everybody is grieving, but we don’t know what for.