My store of knowledge about them seems to me the closest I’ve ever come to possessing something infinite, and only a small part of it can find a foothold in language. And that’s part of what is asked of us, isn’t it? To be a witness, to be able to recount our children’s stories from the very beginning? Exactly when and where they were conceived, how the older favored the right side of the womb and showed little interest in the left and punched against my belly skin from the inside with a knee or fist, how the younger came into the world with a furrowed, philosophical look, a slight skepticism almost, but a willingness to be convinced, and a downy fur on his shoulders that later fell out. I’ve told them the stories of their births many times, but at some point something shifted, they began to insist on making me the hero of these tales rather than them. Now what they want to hear is how hard I needed to work to push them out, how I refused any pain medication because I wanted to be able to stand and walk and writhe however necessary to help them through the birth passage. They want to hear, again, how great the pain was which I had prevailed over—can I describe it? To what could it be compared? What they like, it seems to me, is to hear what an act of terrible strength it took to push them into the world, and that I, their mother, was capable of it. Or maybe what they want is to celebrate, again, the old and fading order of things, where they are not called on to protect, but are themselves watched over and protected.