Because a strange thing happened once I had beans to fret over and a friend to have coffee with and a sullen boy who needed me to pretend I knew about squash: I stopped calling Deb quite so often, and when I did call, I had things to tell her that were mine, and the calls got easier, and one Sunday she said, “You seem better, Mom,” and I heard the relief under it, and I understood at last what I’d been doing to her.

It is one of the hardest lessons of getting older, and no one hands it to you gently: that love can become a weight, and that the people we love most are the ones best positioned to be crushed by it.

I had not meant to make Deb responsible for my happiness.

I had thought I was being a good mother, present and available, close at hand.

But a parent who has emptied out her own life and moved it to the edge of her child’s is not offering closeness.