I don’t say anything. Not because I can’t, but because it isn’t the time yet; and I am only now beginning to see it myself, from this perspective as an outsider to all lives, including my own. What is real this moment is that I must cut today’s wood, and so I stand, pick up the axe and head off toward the woods.

When I get back, I find Katie has dinner ready; she is also angry, because she thinks I went off without answering her because I think she is stupid. I find her demands that I cushion her insecurities occasionally wearing.

“Obviously,” she says coldly, “you didn’t consider what I said worth answering. Maybe you’d like to explain what you believe.”

I sigh, swallow a smile. Why is it that what she says makes me want to smile? The contrast?

“Oh Katie. I don’t ‘believe’ anything. You know that, it’s what you keep fighting. It’s not that I didn’t think what you said was worth answering; it’s just that I couldn’t give an answer. What I’ve learned is inside me, and there’s just no way I can translate it for you.

“Look, you can sit here and tell me every moment of your life that you can remember, and you can analyze all of it and tell me what each moment meant to you; but there is no way that I’ll understand exactly because I haven’t had the experiences. And I can’t explain to you how it is with me because you haven’t experienced what I have. We can get a sense of each other, but we can’t know each other, we can’t really understand. That’s not so terrible; it seems to me that the sense we have of each other is quite a lovely thing. There’s no need to force it into being something else.