My husband is a labor lawyer, his days consumed with pandemic-collapsed businesses and workers losing their paychecks. During the outdoor walks we are still permitted to take, we keep reminding each other to notice spring poppies as we distance-veer back and forth, alert to the sound of the phones in our pockets. His sister might be calling, or my brothers, our son, our cousins, our oldest friends. Even on duty, the paramedic daughter checks in occasionally, from the ambulance, between hospital runs.

The mission is reassurance. We all understand that. She hits the FaceTime prompt, if the signal is good enough. During one of the calls, she smiles at us from the little screen and reminds us how we used to assume she would one day take a temporary posting someplace far away and tough, a war zone or a desert refugee camp.