My mother appeared to be listening more carefully than usual. It occurred to me that this conversation might be driven less by her desire to discuss Goethe—my mother tended toward Dan Brown and Chetan Bhagat; her most-read volume was a Christian devotional for nurses—than by her need to wear a spot of the geode thin enough to break through, say what she wanted to say. Something in me wished to put off her speaking for as long as possible, and I kept on. There are some parts where it feels like it is just blabbing on forever, I continued, but this book created the idea—I suppose the Western
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