Sublime

All You Have Is What You Bring With You

He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.

But it was the nature of being a parent. The kids’ lives are their own. From day one you are handing it back to them bit by bit, until they move on.

“It just became so clear that people felt the need for this. It was almost like I didn’t have to explain, because they understood immediately,”

She told me that when she gave birth at forty to my youngest sister, Ingrid, she knew it was probably the last time, and she felt a pang of loss. My mother’s labors were short and intense—all of them under three hours.

“It takes a long time to drive to … the Bu.”

It was, he would later testify, like someone had finally shown him his home country, even though he’d never been there before. It was the Father he’d spent a lifetime looking for, saying to him, “Welcome home.”