Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

course, our parents get an extra dose of importance in our minds. When we’re little, they’re everything—the gods and goddesses that rule our

worlds. It takes a lot of growing up, and a lot of disappointment, to accept that they’re just normal, bumbling, mistaken humans, like everybody else.

“Choosing to love—despite all the ways that people let you down, and disappear, and break your heart. Knowing everything we know about how hard life is and choosing to love anyway … That’s not weakness. That’s courage.”