Magnolia trees symbolize good fortune and stability, but ours had run out of luck, and not long after the agent’s visit, we had to cut it down. In the tree’s seasons of health, we had admired its glossy leaves and star-shaped flowers, and we hid Easter eggs under the boughs for our daughters to collect.

Though our house had no special distinction, she had chosen our porch for the delivery, heaving across the dusty tiles, trusting us.

After the brokenness of life in 2020, our overseas trip is a do-over of sorts — an effort to capture what eluded us that dismal spring, a celebratory sense of moving forward with optimism.

My museum adventure is an antidote to the emotional numbness that has set in during the pandemic, an escape from an endless Monopoly game of boxes that isolate and bankrupt emotionally.