Haven’t I slogged through enough regrets? Aren’t my hoovesmud-caked and heavy? I used to think things likeHow could anyone . . . ? and then I found out.What makes up a life?My father escaped the pogroms in Russiaon the shoulders of his mother and an older brother.Hiding in the forest by day, they trudged through snow at night.My father. Who stood hunched behind the counterof Hy-Grade Wines & Liquors, who partedhis hair in the middle and left a grease stain on the couch.Who loved watermelon.Now I’m so much older than he lived to be.Last week I couldn’t remember Stevie Wonder’s name.I could see his big, beautiful head swaying.But it took me all day to haul his name up, hand over hand,from the murky well. That same nightI forgot Hemingway’s first name.Now I go around saying, Ernest Hemingway, Stevie Wonder.Ernest Hemingway, Stevie Wonder.And why then can I still recallmy legions of failures. Lashing out at my childwhen I thought I’d lost her in a strange city.The newborn possums I smashedwith a shovel in the garden shed.And Celia who came to my door the nightshe had nowhere to go. Yes,there were circumstances, butI didn’t take her in. And everyoneI’ve lost or abandoned. What ifI didn’t keep shuffling through the litterof my sins and lamentations.Tonight when I go out to lock up the chickensthe orange dahlias glow, each petaltender and suffused with the last light of day.Beauty. That’s an old story too.I may never get to Paris again, but once I heardGhislaine Roux sing “Ave Maria” at Sainte-Chapelle.Sun streamed through the dazzling stained glass.I was so close I could see the fine mist of sweat on her throat.I was washed in a river of splendor.And yet I’ve been so unhappy.I’ve thrown down a towel to soften the tileon the bathroom floor, lain there and cried, I can’t bear it. Ican’t bear it.And then another voice said, not without pity,Of course you can.And I rinsed my face, opened the door,and smiled at the child coloring at the table.Have I had a good life? Once after sexwhile I lay heavy on the body of my beloved,for a second, two seconds, I could feel it—good and bad collapsinglike a wave breaking into the sea.And then the next second I thought about itand it was the aboutness again.The baby keeps saying, I can’t remember.At two, is she already forgetting everythingshe knew before she was born?Yesterday, she put a piece of paperthe size of her thumbnail into a toy mailbox.Then she took it out and read the letter to me.Dear Nana. I love you in the morning.Then she put it back in the box.Do you want to hear it again? she asked.