“I’m not looking for that.

I know there’s no such thing.

I just have room that I didn’t used to have, and I’d rather give it to a child who needs it than let it go to waste.

I had not planned to say it like that, and I heard the truth of it only as it came out of my mouth.

I had room I did not used to have.

That was the plainest way to put it — not a hole to be filled, not a wound to be healed, but simply space, a mother’s capacity that had been built over years and then suddenly had no one to receive it, going stale and unused inside me.