It's New Year's Day in San Francisco. The parrots are back, squawking in the Canary Island date palms across the street. It's completely clear again, so from the top of our block we can see the Bay Bridge, Oakland, Alameda, and Mount Diablo in the distance. Yesterday the four of us chased the waves at Crissy Field, let the ocean air cleanse us of 2020.

I'm not going to say it was a shit year. I don't need to. But also, I can't say it. My son was two years old when this started, and now he's three. Since the beginning of his life—since I was in labor with him, when SJ was driving us to the Redwood City Kaiser at 11 p.m., when I had five contractions in the passenger seat of my car as he received text message after text message from an abusive person intent on trying to ruin the birth of his second child—external forces have been trying to wrest my attention from my son.

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