A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.

And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?