I had just begun writing this letter when my downtown Manhattan neighborhood erupted in sound: people yelling, cars honking, noisemakers blowing. It was Nov. 7, 2020, and the presidential election had finally been called for Joe Biden.

It felt that the joy and relief of that moment weren’t just in celebration of their candidate, however; they were to acknowledge the end of a period of waiting. This entire year has been defined by waiting: for greater clarity about the pandemic, for lockdowns to end, for borders to reopen, for financial relief to arrive, for a turn in the grocery store, for supplies to be delivered, for a vaccine to be approved. These new waits joined old ones, throwing them into sharper relief even for people who for many years were able to ignore them — the wait for racial and economic justice; the wait for equality. That some were still waiting for these fundamental rights after decades of struggling made waiting enraging; that they were waiting amid this new set of existential challenges was almost too much to bear. Would the fates be so cruel as to make us wait for the results of this presidential election, too? Apparently, they were.