San Francisco, California

This is a close-up of the aloe plant featured in days 3 and 24. For a few minutes a day, the sun hits this monster so as to make it almost translucent and mostly clean. I finally got a shot.

On the good advice of friend Jacqui, John sliced a large branch of the aloe and set it in the kitchen to drain its healing juices into a bowl. He's assembled the other sanitizer ingredients and the jars, and is now ready for production. Not that we actually go anywhere anymore where sanitizer would come in handier than soap. But it will be useful to son Jack, whose restaurant still churns out fried chicken for the neighborhood and for local hospital staff, and who has taken to giving away free chicken broth from the plethora of left-over body parts and bones.

Now, what can I do? This week I began reading aloud every day to my grandson, who lives a thousand miles away, a connection that heals the heart on both ends of the line. I've also upped my daily postcard writing quota, encouraging voters in Florida to register to vote by mail (please, voters, take advantage of this program while it lasts!). And yesterday, I gave a pile of my quilting fabric and all of my straight pins to a brave, never-give-up immigrant family we know whose house-cleaning, catering, and carpentry gigs have all dried up. They're going into the mask-making business. American entrepreneurship at its best.

These are tiny, tiny gestures compared to the endurance and sacrifice on the front lines of this disease, and the various, truly good deeds and sacrifices daily chronicled in the news. I'm not trying to make comparisons or take an ounce of credit. Still, it feels good to be at least a little busy and a little useful, both, after a month's distracted worry. Time to live the life we're in, instead of waiting for what is to come.