A girlfriend I had a long time ago told me that when she was six years old, her mother had asked her: “Do you want me to leave your father?” She used to cry and suffer with her parents’ bitter, daily fights, but when her mother asked that question, an immediate and categorical no emerged from her mouth. Things got worse and after a few years her father left them, and they started having a ton of financial problems and heartaches. My girlfriend told me that during much of her childhood, and even after she grew up, she’d wondered what would have happened if she had answered yes. Maybe they would have saved themselves a lot of sorrow. She tended to feel unsatisfied with her life and she thought that if things had been different, “better,” she wouldn’t have to carry around all those insecurities that made her so unhappy. I told her that she was a twenty-five-year-old woman and she couldn’t go around holding her parents responsible for her life; she had to learn to accept things, that everybody makes do with what they have. I felt like I was talking to a little girl, and I told her how childish she was.

I used to say that kind of thing to people, with a lilt of unbreakable self-confidence. But the truth is, the memory of that summer I spent with my aunt and my cousins tends to come back to my mind every once in a while, just as my ex-girlfriend’s memories revisited her.