In my mother’s world, people got sick because of negative energy in their body, and they got better when positive energy rid their body of toxins. Energy was an all-purpose metaphor that explained everything from bad relationships to cancer. At such proclamations, my father would turn his head toward my mother, his blue eyes sweeping the room like a benevolent lighthouse. “What kind of energy would that be?” he would ask. “Is it measurable?” My father loved my mother with a childlike devotion, and my mother loved him back with a kind of maternal exasperation.
