A KITCHEN, A SUNROOM, AND A THOUSAND DAYS

I was young, maybe 8 or 9. My mother was going through a time: The couple she cleaned for and whom we lived with had broken up and left us lingering in their abandoned home. She had cancer, my mother, so her head was where it was, but sometimes she would return from herself to give me strange advice: “Diversify your friend group, Julie. Learn who you really are.” I did.

See, we had dogs. (In that statement is a story featuring my mother’s insistence on keeping her employers’ dogs even