And that is one kind of family, and it is real, and mine — my mother, the small house, the doubles — is real and I have it back now and I would not trade it.

But the spare room taught me there is a second kind, made rather than given, and that the second kind is not a consolation prize for people who lack the first.

It is its own whole thing, and in some ways a truer one, because nobody has to.

My mother is my family by the accident of birth; she got me whether she liked it or not, and love that you’re assigned to is a beautiful thing but it is not a chosen thing.

Enid chose me.