I was, with many others spaced apart six feet or more, standing in line outside a Trader Joe’s, waiting to go in for groceries (no toilet paper or tissue, of course), marveling at the consistency of flowers blooming their fool heads off when the world had lost its mind.

Not an hour earlier I’d been at my computer on this newfangled Zoom thing with a student, who was apologizing profusely for not turning in two assignments.

“My grandpapa died,” she said. “He was so sick, and we didn’t get him to the hospital in time.”

She paused. “He died in my bed, and I can’t sleep in there now. I’m afraid the Covid will get me.”

She did not cry, but she broke my heart nonetheless. She was not my only community college writing student who, not even a month into the pandemic, had lost a loved one to a violent fever, breath that wouldn’t come. Families terrified that they would sicken and die, too.

We kept in touch through the rest of the semester. She and others who just wanted to talk, trapped in their bedrooms at home with their parents, if they were lucky. Sleeping on sofas with friends if they were not.

“Write about it,” I said. “Put it all on the page, and send me that.”

Never mind that wasn’t remotely close to the assignments for news writing or mass media classes. I told so many students that in those days. I gave them A’s for writing about this most painful time.

As the days lengthened, I opened a Zoom room every Thursday evening for anyone who wanted to come write instead of driving to Davis to hold the “Writing as a Healing Art Class.” Dumping my class plan, I invited every student I knew. “Come write,” I said.

And they did—not in vast numbers, maybe eight to ten of them a week—but they showed up and they wrote, and they read, and they cried. So did I.

We were there for each other, not unlike the cheerful bloomers that Trader Joe’s greeted those of us in line. For some reason that made me cry—having to wait in line to get into my favorite grocery store. More than wearing masks or incessant hand washing.

I wasn’t scared for me, in my privileged, white, still-employed bubble. I was scared for them, my students of color who’d lost more than one job that barely supported them and their families.

“Someday this will end,” I told them, having no idea if that would be true. And when they asked, “When?” I’d say, “I don’t know. But it will.”

Going to the store, I’d look at the potted sprigs of hope, and yes, I brought home a small pot of something pinky-orange that day. I put it on my dining room table and later planted it in the back yard. Its resilient self fades and withers, but it still comes back every year.