The transparency men have enjoyed for generations, about their ability to frankly work while also reveling in fatherhood, is still complicated for women. Which is not to say that anyone can have everything.

Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.

So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn't matter anymore, forever after

Sometimes, a stage curtain parts and you see: life could be better if you had more. Usually, I think, we can get just as good a different way. But tricks, they do not always work.

He was a man too busy to flush toilets.

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.