I'd planned to have a midlife crisis this year. I hadn't planned on it being shaped by Covid | Ceridwen Dovey

I don't know my future self yet, but I'm pretty sure she wants me to take off the conventional masks I've been wearing

This was meant to be the year of my own private midlife crisis. Instead it has become the year of the novel coronavirus.

I'd been anticipating turning 40 this November with a heady mix of pleasure and pain, knowing it would mark not only the beginning of my middle age, but the end of almost nine years of intensively mothering preschool-aged children.