I walked across my living room floor, strewn with textbooks, Chuck Taylors, Sun Chips, and a dizzying mix of settling hormones and Smith’s songs. My thoughts? Maybe I should have had more children. Earlier, teenagers had filled the house. Laughing, eating, joking about school, comparing stories about classes and teachers, and exuding the powerful force of rawness and youth.
I floated on the periphery, in the kitchen on a rare evening off, cooking some meals for the week so the leftovers wouldn’t go bad. I soaked up their energy. I worked five feet away, yet they seemed unaware I could hear them.
