Selma had stood there when my parents brought me to her for the first time. My mother had put me in Selma’s arms, and everyone—the shopkeeper, Elsbeth, Marlies, and the optician—had gathered around Selma and me and bent over me as if I were something in fine print. Everyone was silent until Elsbeth said, “She looks like her grandfather. No question.” The optician found that I looked like Selma. The shopkeeper said that I looked like Elsbeth, at which Elsbeth blushed and asked, “Really? Do you really think so?” Marlies, a schoolgirl at the time, said, “She doesn’t look like anyone.” My father said that he had to agree with Elsbeth. Beyond a doubt I looked like his father, and Selma looked at my mother, who was standing at the edge of the group and had remained quiet the entire time.

“She looks like her mother,” Selma said, and then the doorbell rang and rang. Palm was standing outside the door, breathless and with disheveled hair. “It’s a boy,” he shouted, and hugged the optician. “His name is Martin. Come see him, all of you.”

My father had stood there, in a very young version of himself, and looked out the window, searching for the correct answers. Selma sat behind him on the kitchen bench, asking practice questions for his medical school exam. Suddenly my father turned around and said, “When I finish, I’m going to start a practice here.” He smiled at Selma and said, “I’ll settle here, near you.”

When there’s no farm for children to take over, Selma knew, they need to be encouraged to go out into the world. Selma didn’t have a farm. She only had herself and a crooked house that might well collapse before anyone could take it over. She knew that going out into the world would be important, particularly for my father. She knew she should encourage him, but instead of encouragement, all she found within herself was relief that her son would stay here, near her. That’s why she stood up and went to stand next to my father by the window and stroked his back. “Do that, Peter,” she said, “settle here, that will be exactly the right thing,” because it was the only thing she could find within herself. Staying put was always exactly right. Staying put.