...prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came.

“But being a stay-at-home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was…”

“For the first time in her life she could see perfectly well how a person arrive…”

“She would just be catching up when I'd go again, swimming farther out into life…”

“I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.”