She looked small, older than we remembered. Her entire person appeared to be a single hazel-olive tone: clothes, skin, hair, eyes—all registered on that same narrow spectrum. She smelled faintly of charred wood. How could this small monochromatic woman be our mother? Then she gathered us into her arms and we held her, feeling the heat from under her skin, and we were the three-headed monster again, with its three yearning hearts. We held our mother as long as we could, and then longer, until she started to laugh. My beautiful grown-up daughters, she said.
