Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.

Dead … might not be quiet at all.

My wife and I would be very comfortable having a baby at home, or using one of the terrific nurse-midwives at the hospital.

My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves.

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

A single, ordinary person still can make a difference - and single, ordinary people are doing precisely that every day.