The first inkling that society sees me as vulnerable during the Coronavirus pandemic — as older or weaker, as potentially infirm — came with a reminder from Union Park District Council that any board or committee member over age 60 could skip in-person meetings without penalty. (For the record, all meetings now are digital, and yes, my younger colleagues taught me Zoom.)

The next hint was the notice from grocery stores such as Lunds & Byerlys and Whole Foods that I am eligible to shop with others past 60 during the first hour of business, after the stores have been freshly cleaned and before hard-to-stock items have run out.

Because I recently — and sanctimoniously — urged one of my sisters to start writing a daily gratitude list as an antidote to anxiety about the falling stock market and the drip-drip erosion of freedoms in our daily lives, I have reflected on how being 62 helps me weather the uncertainty of a COVID-19 world, where every day the headlines scream a new disaster.

We Baby Boomers were trained to use the telephone.

Talking on the telephone is a learned skill, one that my generation was taught to value (unlike the Millennial who told me he would consider it an “intrusion” if someone called him to check in). It’s convenient, of course, that my iPhone allows me to check two email accounts, post to social media, pay my bills, watch silly videos and listen to podcasts. But it is my phone’s use as just that — a phone — that is tethering me to friends and family as I shelter in place.

This past Saturday, I had an impromptu call with my sister in Denver, who lives alone since her husband died a year ago. My friend Sara and I turned a coffee-shop date into an hour-long telephone call. My childhood friend Janey and I each will fix breakfast this week and then “eat together” while we talk on the phone. Not ideal or what we originally planned, but good enough.

I’m OK with time at home; in fact, I crave it.

Even before Minnesota Governor Tim Walz declared a “peacetime emergency” and limited public gatherings to 10 or fewer people, I was spending the majority of my nonworking evenings at home during the frigid months of January and February: reading, trying new recipes, watching Netflix, following the Democratic debates. My see-and-be-seen partying days (and nights) are long behind me, so staying home more — though a drag during my current staycation, when I wanted to see films and art exhibits, take day trips and explore the city — is not that big a sacrifice or change.

I am practiced at daily exercise.

My yoga studio has shuttered. The athletics and recreation facility at the university where I work is locked up tight. That leaves yoga on my living room floor, with my younger dog, Gabby, licking my face during Savasana, or lifting weights in my basement while half-listening to the bleak news on CNN. Morning dog walks and 2-mile jogs keep me moving around outdoors.

Contrary to stereotypes about people my age, I never have to convince myself to move. Decades of experience have shown me that exercise always strengthens and sustains me. Lately, it also helps keep fear at bay.

Home officing may moderate my Boomer workaholism.

However productive I may be at home, I am simply not going to work as many hours now that nighttime meetings are via Zoom, hallway conversations with colleagues have been eliminated and the events I was to be co-leading for our students this spring — including Day at the Capitol and “Get Counted” Census 2020 workshops — have been cancelled.

A generational differences chart from 2008, though dated, shows how working less may enlarge my life. Described as “competitive” and “ambitious,” Boomers have “traditionally found their worth in their work ethic.” That is me, the mother who willingly ceded at-home parenting to her husband, the “tireless” employee whom one manager called her “gold standard,” the breadwinner who took her responsibilities so seriously that work always came first.

These days I am connecting more with friends, urging my sons to stop by for homecooked food, reviving my sagging spiritual life and learning that a less calendared existence yields a calmer, less chaotic perspective. Motion does not equal meaning. Community and collaboration more than personal achievement will get me — get us, together — through this crisis.