It’s been a year since dates on the calendar meant something to look forward to. Since a wave of coronavirus landed on the shores of the United States and crashed over Philadelphia, so many of the days that were once circled have served merely as reminders of the canceled vacations, the scrapped family gatherings, the funerals we couldn’t attend.

Starting on March 17 last year, Mindy Harris kept a running list of the events she missed: the birthday of her niece and nephew. Easter. Passover. The list grew long. She eventually stopped counting.

But for the 68-year-old grandmother from Cheltenham, Monday was a date on the calendar to celebrate: the day she received her vaccine. And the prick in the arm will allow her to circle another date — in six weeks or so, she can finally hug her children and grandchildren.

So she laughed until she cried in the hallway of a Northeast Philadelphia preschool this week, experiencing an emotion that’s been fleeting for too long: hope.

Philadelphians of every stripe say that while life still isn’t as it was before, they’re optimistic in a way they haven’t felt in a year. As coronavirus vaccinations ramp up and more people feel the indescribable relief of their elderly or at-risk loved ones being protected, government officials this week told Americans they can safely gather once they’re fully vaccinated.

“It’s warm,” said Moneek Pines, the owner of Mount Airy’s ARTrageous Brush & Flow, who before the pandemic hosted in-person paint parties. “You can hear the birds chirping. The air smells different. That in itself brings a little bit more joy.”

Pines, like many other business owners, pivoted to expand her online offerings. She’s reopening slowly, and knows there remains a long way to go in America’s fight against the virus that has cut more than 526,000 lives short.

In Philadelphia, cases are still confirmed daily, getting a vaccine is frustrating and complicated, and essential workers have needs that are unmet. Racial inequities abound. Thousands are still unemployed, live in fear of eviction, or wonder if their business will make it. Parents are still teachers. Women have left the workforce in droves.

For an increasing number of people, though, there are new points on the calendar — a validation of what has been overcome.

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Sitting next to Harris in that preschool hallway Monday was her best friend, Linda Rodriguez, who’s from Northeast Philadelphia and who wore a mask that read “positive energy.” Rodriguez, 68, was initially nervous to get the vaccine but recalled New Year’s Day, when her husband tested positive and was hospitalized for 12 days.

“It’s about being able to see suffering and loss and open the aperture so that more light is coming in.”

Rodriguez was negative but sick with pneumonia and hospitalized, too. The couple were separated by one room.

“After seeing him and what he went through,” she said, “that’s when I decided I wanted it.”

Tarik S. Khan has a version of this vaccine conversation every day as he explains to Philadelphians why they should get the shot. He’s a nurse-practitioner with the Family Practice & Counseling Network, a federally funded health clinic that serves some of the city’s most vulnerable populations. He tells patients that he understands their fears, then reassures them that he got the vaccine, that his parents got the vaccine, that he gave his uncle the vaccine, that he has personally given 350 people the vaccine.

Khan and nurses like him say the war is far from won.

“But we can see the end,” he said. “It feels like there’s hope.”

For thousands of Philadelphians, hope is coming from financial relief promised by the rescue package signed Thursday by President Joe Biden. There will be $1,400 direct payments, expanded benefits for the millions of unemployed, and universal credits for parents.

There is also new relief for restaurants, among the businesses hit hardest by the fact that the coronavirus spreads when we are unmasked and close. Dozens of the spots that made Philadelphia a dining destination have already shuttered.

For those that remain, new relief is welcome, as is the warmer weather that means filled tables on sidewalks and another shot at survival. Nicole Marquis, founder and CEO of HipCityVeg and cofounder of a campaign called Save Philly Restaurants, said the road to recovery will be long and painful, one that requires grief for the businesses lost along the way.

But she believes business will come roaring back, with Americans emerging from their homes desperate for fellowship. That day might not be quite here, but it feels close.

“It really does feel like a ray of sunshine,” she said, “at the end of this extremely long, dark tunnel.”

Optimism is a funny thing in that we can control it more than we think. Harnessing a better outlook isn’t about the absence of pain, said Karen Reivich, director of training programs at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center. Instead, she compared it to taking a photo: “It’s about being able to see suffering and loss and open the aperture so that more light is coming in.”

“And with that extra light,” she said, “you’re able to think productively about pain and loss and suffering, and also able to see goodness. You can see both.”

“It really does feel like a ray of sunshine at the end of this extremely long, dark tunnel.”

On a Point Breeze rooftop Wednesday, Sarah Naji had literally opened the aperture, making photos of vintage and artisan rugs she’d laid out in the springlike sunshine. The 30-year-old was a freelance graphic designer and photographer who specialized in events and lost almost all her work when the pandemic took hold.

So Naji, who is Syrian and grew to love her father’s Persian rug collection, turned her side gig sourcing rugs from the Middle East and selling them on the internet into a full-time job.

“It’s almost like life slowed down,” she said, “and forced me to do something that I’ve always been wanting to do.”

Naji was vaccinated this week at the FEMA site in Center City, and felt a level of hope she recalled experiencing only one other time during the pandemic. She was photographing a wedding in South Philadelphia’s FDR Park as news organizations called the presidential election for Biden. “Everyone was out in the streets honking and smiling. I felt so hopeful,” she said.

This week in FDR, Justin Brown popped on his roller skates after taking a morning walk in the warmer weather with a friend and coworker, Tiara Sharpe. The home health-care aides were vaccinated the day prior, and Sharpe, 32, said she now feels more confident around her asthmatic 9-year-old. “I feel like we’re at the end,” she said.

On the other side of a parking lot, as temperatures reached for 60 degrees, a 62-year-old South Philadelphia native recalled his days as a child riding a banana bike to fish in the park where, even though neighborhoods felt segregated, “everybody comes together.”

“Spring is springing up,” said the man, Jim Kenney, the mayor of Philadelphia, who was in the park announcing enhancements and pondering the next dates on the calendar. “It’s just a sense of renewal. I mean, baseball’s back. We’re gonna have people in the stands. Nothing worse than missing Opening Day.”

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But it is not sport or weather or politics that made the man in charge of Philadelphia’s response to the virus express visceral hope this week. It was seeing kindergartners march into Juniata Park Academy on Monday, some of the first youngsters to return to School District classrooms after spending a year learning through a screen.

Kenney’s eyes welled with tears as he recalled overhearing the teachers: “They were saying, ‘Our babies are coming back, our babies are coming back. I can’t wait to see my babies.’”

One student back in school was 6-year-old Troy, a first grader at Alain Locke School in West Philadelphia, where, as of this week, he was the only student physically in his class. It marked a turning point for his mother, Lisa Thomas, 27, who juggled two kids learning virtually, which sometimes felt like whack-a-mole: When one was done with a math problem, the other needed help spelling. Repeat.

“It makes me feel better” that he’s back in the classroom, she said, “so long as he has his Lysol.”

Inside a different school a few miles away, Susan O’Donnell got her first vaccine shot. She exited the makeshift clinic, inhaling slowly and drinking in the sunny air.

“Oh, at last,” said O’Donnell, 80, of Northeast Philadelphia.

The shot means she and her sister will be able to go to Cape May this summer for the vacation they take every year. Except for last year.

Because last year, June 20 was just a date on the calendar that marked a missed moment. This year, it means hope.