It was the last Thursday in March and I felt a need to record the day. Aside from the news report that as of that moment we now had more cases of Covid-19 virus in the U.S. than any other country, I was brought to tears by the image of my husband and son outside talking.

I had been on the window seat watching an HBO series literally to distraction but turned to see our son delivering groceries to our driveway, 10 feet from my husband, where his father will then approach the bags and bring them inside.

They are talking affably at a distance, joking, and it hit me that my son was trying to keep us alive — shopping for us, not getting closer than a safe distance, out of love and the work of survival.

This is not a movie script, but our new life. Italian mayors are screaming at their citizens online and in the streets. The Chinese think they have peaked and are on the way down the graph while the mayor and the governor of New York are begging on camera for more ventilators from U.S. warehouses. Some New York health workers are wearing trash bags for protection while patients lie gasping their last breaths. Where are the tests, the masks, the lab supplies as the President calls for “packed churches on Easter.”

In a weak moment, our daughter called from far away, sobbing.

“How can I live if you guys get sick and are gone?” she said.

She called back a little while later assuring us she had “gotten it together.”

Our son devotedly supplies us, keeping his distance while working long hours every day to get the local museum online with stories and educational programs for children quarantined at home, unable to play with friends or go to school. His wife is in the trenches, too, trying to keep Islanders fed from the food pantry without passing on the contagion.

So watching father and son chat at the end of the driveway I was brought to tears. I am touched with the love we all share so openly. This is what struck me from my perch on the window seat.

And now I’m looking farther out, hoping that a child in Syria can get through this and hope for a new day of safety for her, and a new normal of a safe and kind life for all of us on Earth.

May the broken priorities in our lives come together for a new normal on this beautiful, fierce and wondrous living orb.

Georgia Morris lives in Vineyard Haven.