Educated

by Tara Westover

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical.

when

You can’t be a person without a birthday, they seemed to say.

You had to listen to what they were saying, not how they were saying it. I told him, That’s just how Westovers talk!”

A decade later my understanding would shift, part of my heavy swing into adulthood, and after that the accident would always make me think of the Apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life—the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.

Mother said Dad was wasting his time, that nobody could talk Tyler out of anything once his mind was made up. “You may as well take a broom and start sweeping dirt off the mountain,” she said. Then she stood, took a few moments to steady herself, and trudged downstairs.

The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.