Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.

She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure.

The Forty Rules of Love is a wise, joyous page-turner... and one that speaks urgently to our war-ravaged times.

All these tears shed in the world, where do they go? If one could capture all of them, they could water the parched. Then perhaps these tears would have value and all this grief would have some meaning. Otherwise, it was all a waste, just an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss.

Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened.

And so I have to live. Because we live for more than just ourselves, Most of the time we live for others, keep putting one foot before the other, left and right, left and right, so that walking becomes a habit, just like breathing. Ina n out, left and right.

And a mother without children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing. Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt, which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease to exist.