Somehow six months have gone by. Six months ago in early March, March 12th, to be exact, I said,

Kyle, hurry, pack up for two weeks, we got to get out of here. We raced around like crazy.

Just a night or two before, we had been out at a restaurant thinking, are we supposed to be

out at this restaurant or not? I don't know. I had even had an event that

Monday for Mom's No, Time to Read Books, with two authors and Shoshana Grus, and we didn't know

what was coming, and then, you know, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson got coronavirus, and they shut down

the NBA, and we panicked. And, of course, then the school's closed, and everything stopped. At first, it was, oh, should we go on spring break or not? And then questions like that became ridiculous. So, of course, we packed up and we were fortunate enough to have another place to go out on Long Island. And the kids and I have been here for six months. And I never could have anticipated the devastation that this virus has

wrought on the world. I never could have imagined how quickly life could just completely change

things like air travel and going to the theater and the movies and going out to eat and

shopping and all those things that make up sort of what you do, going to school. And it's just

stopped, that all of it just stopped. And we all hit out and I just can't believe that this is what's

happened. I can't believe what's happened to my city. Today I'm going

back for the first time and I have so many mixed emotions about it. I'm scared. I know the crime is

so high. I know that the upro side is sort of overrun. I know that it's just not going to be

how I left it and I'm a little scared about it.

Not to say that many of you who stayed in the city have anything to be scared of.

It's my own anxiety, especially given my recent losses, of course, of Kyle's mom, Susan and his grandma Nini,

and how we got to see the coronavirus up close and personal, which was

the worst thing I think I've ever had happened in my life. We talked to doctors every three hours.

We saw how this virus just attacks the body and the soul and the mind, and Susan fought so valiantly and just refused to give up until she just, her body

spoke its final words and that was it. She couldn't fight it anymore. But throughout it all,

I've been trying to adapt with my business. I've been trying to help authors as much as possible.

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