One day, not long ago, I was reading a dull book at my dining room table when I looked up and saw my wife framed in the front doorway of our house. The door was open. The late afternoon light was streaming in around her. Her mind was elsewhere, but her gaze was resting on a white orchid that we kept in a pot on a table by the door. I paused, and looked at her with a special attention, and had a strange and wonderful awareness ripple across my mind: “I know her,” I thought. “I really know her, through and through.” If you had asked what it was exactly that I knew about her in that moment, I
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