Favorites Bar Disappeared

The issue just got fixed, but I want to explain what I did to fix it to find out if it was what fixed it, because nothing makes sense to me. I hope I can explain this so it makes sense. I have a 2019 iMac running Mojave 10.14.6, using Safari 14.0.3. As of this morning, the only update appearing on System Preferences is the Big Sur Upgrade. When I looked on the View menu in Safari, the option was to Hide the Favorites Bar and the Starred Favorites in the Favorites Sidebar would not let me enter any bookmarks at all. The only thing showing up on the Favorites Bar was the start page icon. There was also a regular Bookmark Folder labeled Favorites which contained my favorites. I would try to move the bookmark from that folder to the Starred Favorites but they would disappear also. I tried going to the website and clicking on Add Bookmark via the shared icon and it would appear and then disappear . Anytime I tried to add a favorite, a folder labeled Bookmarks Bar appeared at the bottom of the list, sometimes with the website listed, mostly empty. I ended up with 51 mostly empty folders. Opened and closed Safari several times. Shut the Mac down overnight. None of that seemed to work. Began this post but was too frustrated to continue. This morning, I decided to run First Aid in the Disk Utility App. I have to admit that I didn't get any message or indication that anything was fixed, but when I then tried to add to the Favorites Bar, it worked fine. I'm assuming that a it was a First Aid correction? The only other thing I could think of doing was to go into Time Machine and bring the Safari app from a week ago into my current app folder, but wouldn't have done that without consulting y'all first because I didn't know if that could have had an unwanted side effect.

Sorry I'm so wordy. And thank you for any information someone may be able to provide.