By Karen

Like most of you, I am at home--for me, an apartment in lower Manhattan. My husband is here too. It would not be wise for my children--whose last months of college are online, as will be their commencements--to come to New York right now, and we’re not welcome where they are.

I have never spent this much time at home—except on maternity leave. Needless to say, this is a little different.

For the first time since I was a small child I wake with the light, not an alarm. Manhattan is so quiet I often hear birds, too. That’s really strange.

After I wake, I catch up on overnight developments. To recover, I channel RBG and work out next to my couch, doing things requiring nothing other than bodyweight. Squats. Beast walks. Side lunges. Chung Fu lunges. Dead bugs. Where did these names come from?

I am not a big fan of housework and laundry, but it has to be done, so I do it, and it takes more time than I would have thought. I am mindful of—and impressed by—those who are working full time, homeschooling children, and also cleaning and doing everything else every day. My work now is Lustre, which is not the 24/7 commitment that being a lawyer was. Lustre does have demands—social media needs to be fed, no matter what! But compared to many things it’s relatively calm, especially now that live gatherings are impossible.

There are new rituals. At midday I tune into Governor Cuomo’s press conference. At 7 pm each evening my neighbors and I make noise—I bang on a pot, some seem to have horns and other noisemakers—to salute our healthcare workers and first responders. And some evenings there is cocktail hour with the children or friends.

Food takes up a certain amount of mental energy each day. First, there’s a puzzle: what can I make with what I have that my husband will eat and that won’t turn us both into coronablimps? Then there’s the calming effect that comes with preparation. And of course the eating part is good too.

I have been making Marcella Hazan’s minestrone for decades. Delicious, healthy, flexible. Beans or no beans. Potatoes or no potatoes. I don’t use celery. I do throw in leftover greens—and frozen greens now. Always parmesan rinds. Minestrone cries out for good bread, so I bake Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread. I usually double the recipe, since the second loaf freezes well. I am experimenting with a King Arthur twist on the recipe--apparently if you leave half the dough in the fridge for a few days it will taste like sourdough after you bake it. We’ll see. (It had better be good because there is no more flour to be had!)

There are lots of great recipes for canned tuna. We love capers. We love olives. Many tuna recipes call for fresh parsley. That may be a challenge right now. If you don’t have it, wing it with some dried herbs--oregano, basil. It is hard to keep fresh greens in the kitchen when you don’t shop much, so when I find something like broccoli rabe or Swiss chard, I make a pesto and freeze it for later---to use in pasta, in soup, on beans. Or in some adaptation of this risotto.

We need something sweet, too. I am looking forward to this apple tart. My daughter made it and said it was fabulous. My son stashed a LOT of peanut butter before he went back to school, so peanut butter cookies are also on the menu. The stash is smooth, not crunchy, so I either add crunched peanuts--or not. My husband likes these almond cookies, very like shortcake. I myself am fond of oatmeal raisin cookies. In these trying times I think they count as breakfast.

My mother and I walked everywhere when I was young, and she got me hooked. Walking once a day—sometimes to get food but usually just to walk—is one of the things that keeps me centered right now. But walking is not what it used to be. You have to concentrate—to take to the street in order to pass another human without invading her social space—and it feels rude. It is hard to breathe with my face covered, and my ever present sunglasses fog up.

Lower Manhattan does not look much like its usual busy self. Even after 9/11 there were people on the street. Today, it reminds me of how it looked when I first moved here, decades ago. Almost no-one lived here then, and the streets were very silent at night, after the workers had gone to where real people chose to live. There was beauty in its emptiness after the work day. But now the neighborhood has shops and strollers and babies, and it is not supposed to be silent at night, let alone during the day, with all the local businesses dark and closed. On the windows of a nearby diner, there are heartfelt messages mourning the loss of the proprietor, a neighborhood fixture. Sadly, they are not the only such messages.

I marvel at the blooming trees and flowers. So discordant, given the plague all around us and the absence of humans on the street. No cars, either, nor boats in the harbor, not even any air traffic—-except for surveillance helicopters making sure we all stay socially distant.

How will this end? For each of us, and for our country, and the world? When will I see my children? Hard to know. And I am privileged. It is a lot harder for many others--especially those who are sick, or close to people who are sick, or who have lost their income, or who are on the front lines, working constantly.

One day we will be back into the real world, whatever that looks like when we get there. Can’t wait. And I hope never to work from home, ever again!

Tell us what your days are like.