Everything changes for 12-year-old Samantha McGinty in the summer of 1969. Her father, Brick, stops fussing over his Chevy each weekend, no longer spritzing the windows with water and vinegar and wiping them clean with old pages of the Erietown Times.

Virginia Grohl managed to raise the Foo Fighters founder and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl—a guy who also happens to be kind and stable and who doesn’t hate her. In a new book, she’s asking other music-industry moms how they did the same thing.

We asked Washington writers to share stories, essays, poems, drafts, musings, and other things they’ve been working on during quarantine. Today, a riff by Susan Coll, who is the author of five novels, most recently The Stager.