I love my life and wouldn’t trade it for anyone’s. When people tell me I am living their dream, I feel badly for them. Nobody should live somebody else’s dream. I wouldn’t. My daughter Emma came up to visit to pick up Pearl and go back to the city.

I regret that we do not live closer, and do not share one another’s lives more than we can. But  I have learned to let go, accept other people’s lives and their ability to run their own lives. She is where she needs to be and I am where I need to be and that is,  I think, the way of the world. My heart always sags a bit when she drives off, and then lifts when I think that she is going off to live her life, and my definition of good parenting is not how close your kids stays to you, but how far they go away from you.

I am a refugee, I know. I’m not from here and I’m not from there. It is my familiar place.