Larger Than Life

by Jodi Picoult

I wonder, when women who buy beautiful ivory jewelry fasten those elaborate pendants around their throats, if they are choked by sadness.

There is a reason people say being a mother is the hardest job in the world: You do not sleep and you do not get vacation time. You do not leave your work on your desk at the end of the day. Your briefcase is your heart, and you are rifling through it constantly.

It is not as hard as you’d think to lose an elephant.

He laughs, in the way that I have come to admire—as if there are no fences holding him back, as if pure glee could paint all the walls of the world in a single coat.

As I grew older I learned that not being able to observe a magnified world was not an evolutionary design flaw after all. In fact, it was a means of protection. What we could not see clearly, we didn’t have to pretend to understand.

I had to learn how to be a mother before I realized how lucky I am to be a child.