I did not decide to throw myself between them.

There was no decision in it, no calculation, no moment of weighing.

His hand went up and I was simply already there, my back to him, my body wrapped around my son, before my conscious mind had registered the movement at all.

I have thought about that instant many times, because it was the truest thing my body has ever done.

For fifteen years I had let myself be told I was weak, dependent, small — and in the one instant that tested what I actually was, every cell of me moved without hesitation to put myself between my child and harm, to take a grown man’s blow across my own back rather than let it reach my son.

That is not weakness.