Small Fry: Sunday Time's Best Memoirs of the Year

“Trees need sunlight, water, nutrients,” she said. “But if they have too many, too abundantly, they also don’t flourish. Some struggle makes them stronger, makes the fruit trees produce better fruit.”

“See colors as they are, not the ones they’re supposed to be,” she said. She’d shown me once how an orange in a bowl can be blue, reflecting sky, or purple in shadow, or white with glare. When this sight happens, she said, it’s a surprise; that’s how you know it’s true.

On the drives to and from Macy’s, the Rinconada pool, the zoo, or her house, on El Camino or on Alameda de las Pulgas or Highway 280, she would talk about finding the Skyway, a road that she said ran way up above us, above the ground, in the clouds. “If only we could find it,” she said. “There’s an on-ramp somewhere around here.” We both looked for