The simplest of givens, like going to the kids for Yom Tov or moving into family become question marks

The roads are quiet. There’s the new kind of calm that is growing familiar. Our road is an artery to the city center, and the steady flow of cars, buses, and even heavyweight trucks are the usual background to our lives. Now, Someone has spread a blanket of peace.

The air is fresher; there are few cars, just the occasional mask-wearing cyclist. But somewhere beneath the lull and the breeze lurks deep disquiet, painful news, the gasp of fear, the cry of lonely grief.

At 8 p.m., people step out, and from porches and doorsteps, a round of enthusiastic applause bounds into the spring sunset. It’s a new national institution, clapping for our medical staff at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, a heartfelt ripple of cheers, as if “Clap for Carers” can somehow not only convey gratitude to our dedicated medical staffers but also help protect them and us from the invisible, fearsome enemy.

Inside, things are deceptive too. There’s the idyllic hominess of my children eating an unrushed hot breakfast, singing Adon Olam, brachos, and Shema together, then sharpening their pencils for lessons around the dining room table as if we’re on a lonely homestead somewhere in the American South.

Playing ball out in the garden during “recess” and doing art projects and cleanup time and going for family walks. An undercurrent stalks the adults, clipped texts pulling us into a whirlpool and a torrent of Tehillim for a patient whose every breath is snatched from suffocation.

A family friend who’s been spending the Seder with my parents for 30 years is completely isolated. He sounds despondent over the phone. “Pesach is supposed to be done together,” he says. “You’re not supposed to be alone. You have to be in a chaburah. And I don’t know how to make the Seder plate, I’ve never done it.” I try to imagine him setting a Seder table in his bachelor apartment. Cooking and cleaning, facing the mountain of preparation alone.