It was never going to be them.

So my boots wore through at the toes and I taped them and wore them another season, while three pairs of brand-new sneakers appeared every single fall for the first day of school.

I got very good at saying I wasn’t hungry.

I got very good at already ate. I ruined a great many dinners learning to cook, and I stayed up past midnight learning, from grainy internet videos, how to French-braid hair on the back of a chair before I dared try it on a squirming daughter at seven a.m.

I was not good at it.

I want to be honest — I was genuinely bad at the braiding for years.