The Alchemy of Tension

I last saw my family in early March 2020. I had flown to North Carolina from my home in Oregon to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and new baby niece. My mom and dad each joined me during different parts of the trip. Back then, there were stories of a new illness wreaking havoc in a far corner of the globe, but it felt like an abstraction — too distant to impact my life. I brought hand sanitizer on the plane and smirked at the one passenger wearing…