Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

He was a man too busy to flush toilets.

I knew I would hate my best memory because it would prove that people could fake love or that love could end or worst of all, love was not powerful enough to change a life.

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.

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.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.