And as he got older, that question came more and more often, and every time it came, it broke a little piece of my heart that I did not have another piece to spare.

There is a specific helplessness in not being able to answer your child’s most important question, a helplessness that grinds at you precisely because you are, in every other way, the person who fixes things.

A grandmother raising a boy alone becomes, of necessity, an expert in reassurance, in making the world feel manageable, in having an answer for everything.

I could soothe a nightmare and explain a thunderstorm and mend a broken toy and talk him through a bad day at school.