Every Year, When You're A Child, You

Now I No Longer Believe That People's Secrets Are Defined And Communicable, Or Their Feelings Full-blown And Easy To Recognize.

But I Never Cleaned Thoroughly Enough, My Reorganization Proved To Be Haphazard, The Disgraces Came Unfailingly To Light, And It Was Clear How We Failed, How Disastrously We Fell Short Of That Ideal Of Order And Cleanliness, Household Decency Which I As Much As Anybody Else Believed In.

I Would ... Go Up To The Mailbox And Sit In The Grass, Waiting. ... Till It Came To Me One Day There Were Women Doing This With Their Lives, All Over. There Were Women Just Waiting And Waiting By Mailboxes For One Letter Or Another. I Imagined Me Making This Journey Day After Day And Year After Year, And My Hair Starting To Go Gray, And I Thought, I Was Never Made To Go On Like That. ... If There Were Woman All Through Life Waiting, And Women Busy And Not Waiting, I Knew Which I Had To Be.

She Was Learning, Quite Late, What Many People Around Her Appeared To Have Known Since Childhood That Life Can Be Perfectly Satisfying Without Major Achievements.

The Story Fails But Your Faith In The Importance Of Doing The Story Doesn't Fail.