With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

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.

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

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.

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?).

I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better.