I was not calm in the way a strong person is calm in a story.

I was calm in the way a person is calm when the alternative is drowning, which is to say I had simply run out of the strength to fall apart, and had discovered underneath the exhaustion a colder and more durable kind of function.

There is a particular clarity that comes to a mother when she understands that her child is in danger, and it is not a warm feeling, and it does not feel like courage.

It feels like the temperature dropping.