My son’s twenty-eighth birthday was the toughest of his birthdays. Birthdays, anniversaries are difficult for me. They remind me not only of the movement of time, but of all the beloveds I have lost…

I thought they were married, Uncle Henry on his easy-chair throne in the large front room—silent, but not unkind; Ain’t Lizzie scurrying, concocting in her kitchen, serving, never sitting…