And I tried to think like a scientist, not a daughter—making lists of all the times she had slighted me, all the things she had never said. Objectively—biologically—I knew I was an adult, that I could survive without her approval or attention. There was no reason she had to be part of my life, now that I was grown and independent. But love, you know, isn’t science. My mother was prickly, mercurial, maddening, demanding, infuriating—but she was still my mother.
