Before I switched my phone to airplane mode, a text came from my mother: Text me the moment you land in Lisbon, sweetheart.

Have a wonderful trip. And I smiled, because she asked for no explanation, and she did not tell me that a good woman endures mistreatment to keep a marriage whole.

She only wanted to know that I was safe.

That is what love sounds like, I thought.

It had taken me a divorce to be able to tell the difference.

Because that, in the end, was the whole lesson, distilled into a single text message from my mother on a terminal bench.