The Truth Is That When You're Writing

And Yet We Constantly Reclaim Some Part Of That Primal Spontaneity Through The Youngest Among Us, Not Only Through Their Sorrow And Anger But Simply Through Everyday Discoveries, Life Unwrapped. To See A Child Touch The Piano Keys For The First Time, To Watch A Small Body Slice Through The Surface Of The Water In A Clean Dive, Is To Experience The Shock, Not Of The New, But Of The Familiar Revisited As Though It Were Strange And Wonderful.

At The Same Time That You've Got To Open Yourself Up To The Fact That Experience Is Going To Teach You Year After Year, Decade After Decade. I Remember I Very Badly Wanted To Write A Newspaper Column When I Was Only 21 Years Old, And I Went To My Editor And Told Him That, And He Said, "you're A Really Good Writer, But You Haven't Lived Long Enough To Be Qualified To Live Out Loud."

I Read And Walked For Miles At Night Along The Beach, Writing Bad Blank Verse And Searching Endlessly For Someone Wonderful Who Would Step Out Of The Darkness And Change My Life. It Never Crossed My Mind That That Person Could Be Me.

What Had I Expected Of The First Child? Everything. Rocket Scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated Hitter. We Talked Wisely At Cocktail Parties About The Sad Mistake Our Mothers Had Made In Pinning All Their Hopes And Dreams On Us. We Were Full Of It.

A Week In The Hospital She Had Told Us. A Hysterectomy, She Had Said. It Had Seemed Unremarkable To Me In A Woman Of Forty-six Long Finished With Childbearing, Although Every Day That I Grow Older I Realize There Is Never Anything Unremarkable About Losing Any Part Of What Makes You Female - A Breast, A Womb, A Child, A Man.