How the Light Gets In

by Joyce Maynard

Here’s what you did—if you were wise. You held on to these small, good moments, the small, good things, and tried not to be greedy for more. They’re like the pieces of expensive broken bowl lined up on the windowsill that catch the light. The times when it hits the glass might be rare. You never knew where you’d find one of these moments, or when. Best not to go looking for them. Keep your eyes open and they’d appear. And for one fleeting moment anyway, you remembered what happiness felt like.

It’s the light coming through the window at just the right angle, just for a moment there. You wish it never ended but you know it will. Take joy in those moments the sun hits the broken pieces of the Dale Chihuly bowl just right, and never mind when it doesn’t. Leave it at that.

How long can you keep loving a person whose actions keep hurting you? Does a person’s heart freeze over eventually, like a pond in winter? Hers never does. Not for her child, anyway. “I have no control over how Ursula chooses to see me,” Eleanor tells Al. “Ursula will always be my daughter. I will always love her. If she lets me back into her life, that will be a great day. If she never does, I’ll keep loving her anyway.”

If you live long enough, everything happens. The good and the terrible. And it may be the case—it probably is—that a person’s glorious triumphs seldom serve as the best teachers of what it means to be human. The lessons are all in the failures.

Failure keeps you humble. Failure opens your heart to all those other people out there who also fall short. It makes a person try to do better. If she pays attention. If she doesn’t give up.