you look out the window solely to see if anyone else’s mask is cooler than your mask (Nope, not even close.)
you notice that ambulances aren’t even bothering to use their sirens because there’s no traffic to alert anyway
you hang a bag of homemade brownies on your upstairs neighbor’s doorknob and skulk away like a criminal before she can open the door
you run up and down the same flight of steps in your building’s stairwell and call it “cardio”
you weep over your Costco order (finally! fruit!) and treat the delivery guy like an Allied liberator
you can set your watch by the nightly 7 p.m. block party that consists of people leaning out windows to clap, hoot, bang on pots, and listen to Sinatra's "New York, New York"
you see people leaving the corner bodega clutching armloads of flowers and remember, vaguely, that there’s beauty in the world.
Editor and writer Samantha Shubert is co-founder of Manhattan–based Remarkable Life Memoirs, which specializes in preserving people’s stories in one-of-a-kind, privately published books.