The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays

Mulder is the one who makes things happen, and Scully is the one who gets things done (if you’re confused about the difference you should take a good hard look at yourself).

The first time you felt a way. The first time you tried to be the way you felt. These are stories, too. These nights you didn’t. You’re allowed to call them beginnings.

The DRC robots are not the perfect heroes I’d hoped for, but I love them anyway. I love them specifically. I love them right now, without assuming they will someday be better at doing the things they’re meant to do. I love them for reminding me that when you are working toward a large good thing, it’s the small stuff that often feels impossible. Ju

the neckerchief compounded how stupid and lacking in dignity you felt and you vowed to never again wear any article of clothing that you could not survive the mortification of being dumped in. This has proved to be a good rule.

a house where you have cried over multiple heartbreaks is infinitely better than a house where you’ve only cried over one, defining, bad thing.

I am porous to the world, a kind of joyful sponge for the affectations and interests of the people I love. It has been the work of my life to build slightly firmer boundaries around myself so that I can figure out where I end and the people I love begin.

VI | ALL CACTI ARE SUCCULENTS BUT NOT ALL SUCCULENTS ARE CACTI, 1994 My parents go on vacation to Arizona. They bring back souvenir cacti for my sister, Leslie, and me. Little furry stumps, potted in gravel. Within a month, both our cacti are dead. My sister’s cactus is desiccated and shrunken. Dead of thirst. Mine is slumped over, rotten through.

Unless, of course, your last partner did a number on you, and afterward you didn’t feel quite like yourself anymore. Weren’t sure, anymore, who you were. Unless, of course, you remember. Remember every not-great experience you’ve ever had with a partner. How they made you feel wary and angry and fearful and then, how they also told you to stop acti

Most of all, this is a book about the ways each of us shape our lives, and our understanding of them, through stories. I respect that there are likely many quantum-entangled alternate and complementary and divergent versions of the stories I tell. As many different versions as there are people in the book, probably. And those stories are just as re