As a teenager and into my early twenties I lived in a geodesic dome on a mountain. No running water, no phone, real rustic. I loved it. One night, there by myself, I was terrified. I was up in the loft trying to sleep but I couldn't because I was so scared to be that alone. I knew I'd never lose my fear if I didn't address it so I went outside in my undies and waited for the darkness to come and kill me. But it didn't. It was beautiful and calm and even kind. I went back to bed eventually.

The first time I took my daughters to the ocean - and I love the ocean but where we swim is very rough, very New England, rip tide, not messing around ocean - and a thought arrived: I was asking my daughters to slowly recognize death, just dip their toes in its fathomless edge, to know it is there, even in the night when we don't see it and that it, in its mystery and largeness, in its terror, is the thing that makes life precious, magnificent and full of never-ending curiosity.

Discourse about motherhood is chillingly narrow-minded. It's a tool the patriarchy uses, of course. So people complain about their kids or they complain about the pain of birth or they make motherhood kitschy, Mother's Day-y.

I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.

In writing I found a way to make silence and to be silent. The short story has a lot more silence than the novel and that is its success.

I live with deer and coyotes. Lyme ticks are a daily concern and mystery, but, yes, what do they mean? I don't know yet. But I'd rather point out the abundance of mystery than pretend to solve it. As if I could solve it! What does a deer mean? Who knows? Everything!

Wait," I say. "I think you're mistaken. Saying there is no dream is the same as saying everything is a dream. Isn't it? Everyone's a dreamer? Extraordinary things happen all the time even when we're awake. What I meant to suggest to you, if indeed that was me in your dream doing the suggesting, is that there is only one world. This one. The dream is real. The ordinary is the wonderful. The wonderful is the ordinary.