This article was supposed to be about Italian American Easter traditions; however, the world has changed dramatically since I began writing the story a little over a month ago. Many of us face spending Easter separated from our loved ones—or even alone—as economic uncertainty grips the nation and the world, and as an invisible pathogen continues to attack our communities.

To proceed with the article as originally conceived would have been, well, tone deaf. So I scrapped it. The COVID-19 pandemic has an insidious mate: the epidemic of anxiety and fear. Apprehension surrounding the disease itself, coupled with social isolation and financial woes, constitutes a second formidable enemy that needs to be fought in conjunction with the virus.