The first question she was asked was What do you do? as if that were enough to define you. Nobody ever asked you who you really were, because that changed. You might be a judge or a mother or a dreamer. You might be a loner or a visionary or a pessimist. You might be the victim, and you might be the bully. You could be the parent, and also the child. You might wond one day and heal the next.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

Tradionally, parents made decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down.

Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?" I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?

I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

His hand is cool on my cheek as he paints a tear beneath my left eye, dark blue and swollen with sorrow.