How do I know (I always wonder) when the ending is complete and when I’ve been in the neutral zone long enough? How do I know which path before me represents a genuinely new beginning or which footprints represent a real path—or even which marks in the dust represent real footprints? It’s all very well to talk about new phases of life, but they’re not different colors, the way the states were on our grammar school maps. There are times when I long for a simple way out, a procedure to follow rather than a process to understand.
