I tell it, on the rare occasions I tell it, for the mothers who are somewhere in the middle of it right now — the ones opening the eviction notices with steady hands, performing a calm they do not feel, doing the terrible arithmetic of the smaller plate, convinced that their inability to make the war stop is proof they are failing.
I want them to know what I did not know in the worst of it: that the strength you are spending to survive is not disappearing into nothing.
Your children are watching.
They are learning what a person looks like who does not lie down.
And one day, in a way you cannot predict and could never engineer, that strength you thought you were spending alone will come back to you, in a voice higher than you expect, at a moment you did not see coming, and it will be enough.
Rory looked up from the castle, hair falling in his eyes.
“Hey, Mom.
Can we go to the park after dinner?”
I felt my grandmother’s locket against my collarbone, and the quiet of a house no one could take, and the warm weight of a peace I had stopped believing we would reach.
“We can go anywhere you want,” I said.