Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

I put on my nightgown and crawl in beside him, covering the hand that covers his heart. Live forever, I say to myself.

Fear and laughter: the two worst reactions in the absence of logic.

There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well, until one morning you’re picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.

The number of things I’d failed to grasp back then was as limitless as the stars in the night sky.

“Quarter-life crisis,” Nell says. “It’s when your life falls apart at twenty-five or thereabout. The pandemic is our quarter-life crisis.”