It started with a text. Or perhaps it was the phone call. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it really started the week before, when my husband mentioned that his cousin S., who lives far away, would be visiting the area and wanted to come over for dinner in our Hudson, N.Y., backyard, and I paused.

“Don’t forget, my parents come next week,” I said.

But by the time the day came for S.’s visit, the desire for normalcy had pushed past thoughts of safety, and she arrived wearing a mask. She spent the next couple of hours in our backyard eating takeout Thai and talking without a mask. Then she put it back on as she left.

That was on a Wednesday. My parents pulled into town on the next Sunday. We got the text on the following …continued .
[Source: New York Times]