So much of writing is what happens when we are bringing tomatoes from one house to another.

Speaking of childhood, I have been aware recently—while watching my youngest child, Billie, age twenty-nine, become first a foster parent and then an adoptive parent of Z (which they wrote about again this week)—about the soft and open time in my own life when I became a mother. At twenty-two, I was younger than Billie. Honestly, twenty-two seems ludicrous now.

Twenty-two!

But I felt very grown-up then. I’d felt that way—very grown-up—for some time already. I am sure of this, because I remember it so clearly, even though I have little other evidence of that time. But, when I was finishing up the drafting of The Part That Burns, I did unearth some old file folders full of papers from my childhood and adolescence—one of only a couple of small boxes remaining from that time. When you are constantly packing and unpacking, things go missing. The sum total of my memorabilia is paltry.

But I do have some papers and “journals.” I say “journals” rather than journals because I’ve never been fai…