I injured my knee nearly three years ago. But if I’m being honest, the pain began in 1987.

That was the year I bent over in front of my pediatrician as he showed my mother the growing curve in my spine. I was ten years old. I remember feeling cold, wearing only fuchsia underwear that were a size too big for me and, I felt, slightly risqué for my age. As they went over the details of the progression, treatments, and complications (which included death from suffocation), all I could do was wish that I had chosen different panties.

There are many memes about 2020 being a do-over. I laugh too, but I always add an extra punch line: There are no do-overs. There is only what we are given and what we do with it.

Many people have buried themselves in a fog these past six months. It’s the mind’s natural response when faced with too much: COVID-19, racial reckoning, the cruel joke of online schooling, presidential disasters, wildfires…