When my youngest was just over a year old and not yet walking, I was at a child’s birthday party around a pond. I sat her to play on a blanket. Her back was to me, and, after a while, a little girl ran over to me and said something was wrong with my baby.

My baby’s eyes were watering terribly. Before long, she seemed to have trouble breathing. A woman I had just met drove me and the baby to the ER. I sat in the backseat, talking to my littlest, hearing my voice speaking quietly, as if I was dividing in two. I knew I was terribly afraid, because I wasn’t panicking.

By the time we had reached the ER, whatever bothered her had passed. Although I had her tested for multiple allergies, this event never occurred. But for the rest of the summer, I felt as though a knife had sliced over me, shearing off some essential part of me.

The pandemic has changed all of us — both over a year, and in smaller, sharper pieces, as in my family’s recent case. The New York Times shares stories today of new lives emerging, reshaping and reforming. Of lives going on.