I don't know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood, whether they'll grow up attached to homemade pizza on Friday nights, or the scent of peppers roasting over a fire, or what. I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing. Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, the world will have trees enough with arms to receive them.

I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, because it's the put-together of all your past choices.

It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.

The gods you do not pay are the ones that can curse you best.

No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.