The New York Times: Frigid Waters; A Fleeting Balm for a Mother’s Unspeakable Grief

By January, we were 10 months into the pandemic and I couldn’t remember the last time I had left Long Island. My husband and I were raising two young children and working, cleaning and cooking, indefinitely, from home. It was hard to imagine a time when I had felt more claustrophobic.

But one frigid morning, when I was bundled up in a knee-length parka, walking the dog on the beach, it dawned on me that the sliver of a peninsula I lived on — surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the south and the Long Island Sound to the north — offered an escape. What if I could muster the courage to leave the dry land and take a plunge? Would the shock to my system shake me out of this quarantine malaise?