You Think It, I'll Say It

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Despite the location of its origins, it had been a happiness wholly unattached to her children; it had been a grown-up happiness.

I had no idea, of course, that of all the feelings of my youth that would pass, it was this one, of an abundance of time so great as to routinely be unfillable, that would vanish with the least ceremony.

I wasn’t a person compelled to broadcast my own choices in the hopes of making other people feel inferior.

Sometimes when I see photos Adam took of me holding Sadie in the first month of her life, I can discern the faintly bumpy outline of cabbage leaves beneath my nursing bra, and I’m reminded of a particular kind of confusion that hasn’t entirely disappeared but has, with time, decreased.