QUOTE : He was not home. She waited at the table in the dark courtyard. This was too familiar to all of us. I came out and sat beside her. She put her arm around me. “I’ll stay with you,” I declared. “You should go to bed. He’ll be home soon. He’ll come home.” I am thinking of that moment. I am thinking about the texture of skin, the particular clamminess of my mother’s arm on my bare shoulder and her hand pressed to my hip as she leaned over to kiss me. When I got older, I still thought I could write life. I didn’t understand, as my mother had just realized that evening, that it is the other way around. And yet, here I am, still trying.