Tom Lake

The stories that are familiar will always be our favorites.

We are swimming through eternity, my daughters’ bright mermaid legs kicking out towards deeper water. I stay beneath the surface and marvel for as long as my lungs can hold.

Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well

The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-­stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else.

There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it.

“You’re so gross. You should be a vet,”

Like every other mother in the history of time, I wondered if I would ever be able to love another child as much as I loved her.

And so I would hold her. You don’t forget that, even if your daughters have grown and been gone for years and then come home.

I’ve made a point never to think of him at all, except that now I am thinking of him.

I thought dating meant when I was their age: ice cream, movies, walking home from school, the dread and desire that surrounded the mystery of kissing.