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I ran before the heat arrived, listening to Aimee Mann’s sternly worded music delineating the significance of self-acceptance. Somehow, food was secondary but adequate: a bowl of fruit salad, a pause in the afternoon for more salad, an avocado, dinner, and an afterthought. For the first time in years, I was alone, complete, free of the pull of duty and love, outside of the frame of family, mom, dad, and our kid, alone and grateful, alone and amazed by the strength I felt in my skin and bones, all the senses awake, the fuzz and mist of motherhood banished.

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Just after sunrise, silence was the first wave and then the sounds of birds and small rustles in the trees and bushes that surrounded the Casita. I absorbed the slow unfolding of the morning, standing on my front steps, the air chilled by the desert night, colors that didn’t exist in Dallas, the lilac of the distant mountains, the ochre tones of the closer hills, an explosion of clouds, the sun pushing through, drenching the landscape, sweeping back the moon and stars, nature in all its bossy glory, I had forgotten how to breathe. 

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I had been living in Dallas for six months when one of my old boyfriends, a bad boyfriend but someone who always made me laugh and had been in my life when my first novel was published, contacted me to meet for lunch since he was coming to Texas. He had been in Israel when I met Kevin, and by the time he returned to New York, I was engaged, pregnant, and soon to move to London. I wanted to see someone who knew me back in New York when I was thin, single, and possibly cool. Now, I was none of those things, living in suburbia with my wonderful, albeit demanding baby and my busy, mostly silent husband. I lived in a ranch house on a cul-de-sac with largely invisible neighbors, except the boy across the street who spent most of his time waving at anyone or anything (squirrels, cars, dogs) passing his porch.

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