As such things go, early on during the pandemic I passed on a piece of good advice I had heard — about learning a new skill during the lockdown — then did not really heed that thought myself.

In the three months since we started home schooling our children, the global pandemic has made me feel like a 1950s housewife, sequestered at home with her colicky newborn, while also being a failing schoolteacher and homesteader.

“It gets easier,” someone said recently in referring to long marriages and looking my way for confirmation.