You’d had arguments and heartache before that, too, of course. Angry times and defeats and funerals. You’d already learned that loving someone very much doesn’t stop them from dying, but that you can still talk to them afterward, the way you used to talk to Grandpa under the plum tree. You knew there were illnesses that couldn’t be cured, and questions that couldn’t be answered—and yet you knew, too, that the glittering, dewy spiderwebs held answers that could never be put into words. God lived in the deepest, warmest part of your heart, and in the humming of insects in the springtime. You climbed to the very tops of the trees, to feel yourself sway with them in the breeze. You had a boyfriend who fenced, for whom you drew sketches of the twelve children you’d have together someday. You threw tantrums, flinging yourself down on the pavement and flatly refusing to get up. You collected pretty words, keeping lists of them in notebooks, and lists of crazy words, too. You wanted to be a firefighter, to save the world, to be a great writer. You didn’t give a damn about mirrors or appearances. You were nine years old.