Somehow I managed to do all the things a mother does: tell my daughter to hurry up, help her get dressed in the changing room, fold the gi and put it in her sports bag, retrieve the socks caught in the bunched-up cuffs of her trousers and the sandals that had slipped through the planks of the changing room bench, all the miniature objects—shoes, lunchboxes, mittens connected by a strand of yarn—designed to vanish into every nook and cranny. I put my arms around my daughter and hugged her as hard as I could, trying to calm my own racing heart.
