I sat in my mother’s chair near the windows and thought about the curious way she sometimes had of speaking to me more freely in bad weather, as though the rattle of sleet against the windowpanes might have served as a cover for her confidences. I used to think of it this way: with the rain, conversation. The atmosphere attempting openness and never quite achieving it, my mother returning to reticence before I ever had a chance to get a complete foothold.
