My mother knows that she knows very little about my marriage. She knows it wasn’t good, but I don’t like to bring her into the details of why or how, even when she asks. Our lives have always felt tethered, together and apart, and she’s determined to feel what I feel, especially when it’s painful or tragic. “I want to be sad with you,” she told me, asking for more details, to know specifically what my husband said and how he said it and when he said it. Part of her, I suspect, wanted to figure out where I had gotten him wrong, and whether I could apologize and repair my marriage. A bigger part
...more
