My Mother Screamed That I Had an Iceberg Where My Soul Should Be and Slammed the Door Hard Enough to Rattle the Photos — I Stood There Waiting for the Guilt That Always Came, and for the First Time in Thirty-Two Years, It Never Did

But I could make absolutely certain they stopped here, with me, in this generation, in this room.

The pattern that had been handed down to me like a family heirloom was going to end in my arms.

I did not know, until I held my own daughter, how much of what my mother did to me had been done to her first.

I am not saying this to excuse Diane; I have come to believe that understanding where a wound comes from and excusing the person who passes it on are two different things, and that you can hold the first without granting the second.

But rocking Iris in that chair, I found myself thinking about my mother as a girl, in whatever house she grew up in, learning whatever she learned about what love costs and what a child is for.