What was I thinking about then, I wonder? What was I feeling? Where was the “I” in all of that? I was the lover, the giver, the doer, the mother, the wife, and that is where the “I” was. Which makes me sound martyred, only of course it wasn’t like that. I didn’t think of it that way; in fact, I cannot remember that I thought, or felt, anything about myself, except that I loved these people and they depended on me. I don’t remember assessments, times when one thinks, “well then, am I happy, or just what is going on, anyway?” I think I must have just assumed it, for I had everything it had ever occurred to me to ask for. All of it was as it was supposed to be, although sometimes I was so tired.

And yet, here I am now and the garden is done for today. Should I ask Katie to stay for dinner? I think not. It’s been too long a day, I don’t want to go any farther. I shall ask her to leave, and then have my dinner, and later I may sit outside in the dusk.

I hope I will be able to sleep. I don’t want to go through what I did last night, lying awake, remembering. I have remembered enough for today. It has gone far enough.

6

6

But once begun it is, of course, relentless.

The memories forage on into the next years, that began when Elliott was almost nine and Katie was six and in school all day. I remember the bad times. I must say now, at the beginning, that there were also the good times, the moments of pleasure, for they must, for truth, be acknowledged. It is just that I do not remember them as well.

Partly, I think, it is that my memory is clinging now to the bad, a defence, perhaps. But what went wrong did not come on me swiftly and inexorably, like an avalanche, but subtly and with periods of relief. Those periods were the good times. I might look at my children and my husband at dinner and see them surrounded, like a miracle, by an atmosphere of great love, the most important people I could ever see, and I was so happy I could understand that, that I would have to leave the table for a moment to cry.

Or I might go to Katie’s room in the morning and find her already awake, lying quietly in bed, and she would look up at me and smile and say, “Hi, Mommy,” and I would melt and hold her and be terribly grateful.