You Never Forget Your First Fall.

It Was A Strange Thing, To Still Be In Love With Your Wife And To Not Know If You Liked Her. What Would Happen When This Was All Over? Could You Forgive Someone If She Hurt You And The People You Love, If She Truly Believed She Was Only Trying To Help? I Had Filed For Divorce, But That Wasn't What I Really Wanted. What I Really Wanted Was For All Of Us To Go Back Two Years, And Start Over. Had I Ever Really Told Her That?

Perhaps He D Always Known That The Truth Of A Person Lies In The Heart.

How Could He Convey To Someone Who'd Never Even Met Her The Way She Always Smelled Like Rain, Or How His Stomach Knotted Up Every Time He Saw Her Shake Loose Her Hair From Its Braid? How Could He Describe How It Felt When She Finished His Sentences, Turnec The Mug They Were Sharing So That Her Mouth Landed Where His Had Been? How Did He Explain The Way They Could Be In A Locker Room, Or Underwater, Or In The Piney Woods Of Maine, Bus As Long As Em Was With Him, He Was At Home?

And Sometimes, He Was Less Lucid. He'd Run Around His Cell Like A Caged Animal; He'd Rock Back And Forth; He'd Swing From Topic To Topic As If It Was The Only Way To Cross The Jungle Of His Thoughts.

Was It The Act Of Giving Birth That Made You A Mother? Did You Lose That Label When You Relinquished Your Child? If People Were Measured By Their Deeds, On The One Hand, I Had A Woman Who Had Chosen To Give Me Up; On The Other, I Had A Woman Who'd Sat Up With Me At Night When I Was Sick As A Child, Who'd Cried With Me Over Boyfriends, Who'd Clapped Fiercely At My Law School Graduation. Which Acts Made You More Of A Mother? Both, I Realized. Being A Parent Wasn't Just About Bearing A Child. It Was About Bearing Witness To Its Life.