Her baby woke unexpectedly, and she picked him up and lifted him to her with a smile that pierced me. I wasn’t missing only life’s bacchanalian pleasures—the pleasure of tart raspberries and custard, the self-forgetfulness of a muscle-burning workout, the energetic sense of hurtling out the door, excited about a meeting—but its metaphysical ones. I had no children, and I wanted to be a mother. I once had ambition and yearned to write; now I only wanted the pain and fog to lift. I was, in some profound sense, interrupted and out of time, and it was this—the gray-wool hours through which I
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