The COVID year was hell — but also lovely

I knew the yearlong pandemic was far from over, a week or so ago, when I found myself with dozens of others in downtown St. Paul’s Roy Wilkins Auditorium, each of us standing uneasily at our own table, spitting over and over into a plastic tube.

This was my third coronavirus test, and the first that didn’t involve a swab jammed upward into my nostril at a drive-up testing location. That was bad enough, but the recent self-administered procedure seemed somehow worse.

I was panicked at sharing an...