Stuck at Home With My 20-Year-Old Daughter

My daughter, Kate, arrived in the world on the first vernal equinox of the new millennium—a healthy, full-term baby born under a full moon. As a nursing infant, she spent her first Thanksgiving in Tallahassee, in the thick of the 2000 Florida presidential recount. As a toddler, she experienced the 9/11 attacks in Washington, D.C., and the nanny of one of her playmates was killed by the D.C. sniper that same fall. She has lived her whole life in the shadow of momentous, tumultuous events.

But perhaps nothing could have prepared her for the current pandemic, its shattering impact on the world, or its mundane and achingly uncertain implications for her future. She is a sophomore at Barnard College now, and on March 11 she came home to Los Angeles for spring break three days early as the coronavirus spread through New York City. The next day, Barnard announced that classes would go online for the rest of the year, and the day after that came word that she had to get her belongings out