At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.

I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?

I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.

I come to writing from hearing great stories as a child in Louisiana, where the mark of a person was his or her ability to be a raconteur. I also come to writing as a professional actress whose body has been trained to listen and smell and inhabit characters without judgment.

How wide and sweet and wild motherhood and sisterhood can be.

we have to suffer mosquitoes the size of blackbirds.

I believe that illness has led me to a life of gratitude, so I consider Lyme disease at this point in my life to be a blessing in disguise.