Roxy marvels at the deep absorption of the players, who never seem impatient. It’s as if the rest of life has slowed to match the pace of the game.

But I hadn’t counted on the circularity of life: the way it delivers us, with age, back to the beginning.

Tor is one of those essential figures who catalyze action in other people and then fade into nonexistence without making it into the history.

One horror of motherhood lies in the moments when she can see both the exquisiteness of her child and his utter inconsequence to others.

If he couldn’t search or retrieve or view his own past, then it wasn’t really his. It was lost.

These men all moved to California recently, driven by a lust for space that can’t be satisfied by old cities with their tinge of Europe and horse carts and history. There is an ungoverned feel to California’s mountains and deserts and reckless coast.

Since then, I’ve subjected my impulses to leave for work to a three-step protocol: 1) Is it necessary that I go at this moment? 2) Is there something at home that I want to avoid? 3) Will I be letting anyone down by leaving right now?

If she’d had an inkling, back then, of the ache this constraint would cause her, she would never—not once!—have said, “Let go of me, boys, I just need a minute,” and shaken them off. She would have held still and let them pick her clean, understanding that there would be nothing better to save herself for.