I never consciously stopped working, really, it just seemed to happen without me even realizing. Ben took the news of my pregnancy well—he was surprised but excited, the way I said I was, too—but still, he was busy. The work never eased up, his schedule never thinned, so it was my identity that had to shift, a slow, gradual, seemingly inevitable progression, like aging, that I didn’t really notice was happening until I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and hardly recognized the face staring back.
