No sooner were New York restaurants granted a reprieve from the Covid-19 lockdown did patrons come back in swarms for outdoor dining. But for many on the East End who had become used to hunkering down and ordering takeout, if at all, the return of crowds was an unsettling shock.

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.