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Before we were married, my husband, J.J., and I both grew up in Rochester, New York, and we went to high school together. J.J. came out to California for the film industry — he’s a filmmaker by trade and runs a filmmaking community called Industry Jump — and we reconnected one summer when he came home to visit. We’ve been living together in California for seven years.
When COVID-19 hit, Portal was our lifeline. We’d be on video calls every night with a different family member, or sometimes all together at once. We had Passover Seders over Portal, and Thanksgiving dinners. Sometimes we call up our parents on Portal and just bring them over to the table to have dinner with us.