The Cost of Experience

To be a mother is to live piercingly and inescapably in the moment. D.'s wife walks alone around the wet foggy streets of the town. She considers buying some Italian delicacies to take home, but her heart isn't in it. If there were some way of erasing all her memories, she would take it. Her understanding of the secrets of events is far deeper than memory. It is a kind of creativity that applies knowledge to the ongoing moment. The sun unexpectedly advances from behind the clouds, as though stepping through the curtain on stage. The world is transformed. In fact, the sunny afternoon and the children at play are so real they hint at actual recurrence