Sixteen Years I Didn’t Speak to My Mother. Then I Went Missing, and From Her Sickbed She Said “Go Find Her”

Knowing better, it turns out, is not the same as doing better when you are tired and close to home.

That is a lesson I would have sworn I already understood, right up until the ground turned to soup under my front tire.

The ground that looked firm was a skin over mud.

One tire dropped, and then the whole truck began to slide, slow and horrible, down toward a low swampy hollow full of black water and weeds.

I stamped on the brake.

Nothing answered.