One morning last week Henry wore my socks to school. You would think that socks would be, like clouds or waves, anonymous things, too nondescript and numerous to keep track of, but in fact I have some favorite socks and I could tell, just looking at the ankle trim of his socks, that these were they. “Mmmm, they’re so comfortable,” he said. “I really like them.” One day a long time ago, some anonymous day, in fact, unmarked, two gametes joined to produce a zygote, which became a morula and then, of course, a blastocyst. Then, after the proper amount of time, plus, it seemed, a few extra days, a boy. Then the boy started wearing my socks, and waking up at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in the Berkshires to watch the mist, which filled the valley, burn off, and to see three deer eat at the crab apple tree, stooping to pick fallen apples from the ground. “You know,” he said, “these socks are a little tight. Do they really fit you?” And he ran off to class, away from me and John. We are a drag on his great spirits in the morning.

Yesterday I ripped my contact in half and removed half my contact from my eye. Then our bed broke. Then, today, I took the boys and the dog for a walk around a lake. As we walked, and the dog strained at her leash, the boys posed questions to me that all required immediate answers, which then inspired other questions. Their goal, it seemed to me, was to force me into an insupportable answer, or to concede that my rule-making was essentially arbitrary, or to become a tyrant. Can I throw a stone in the lake? You may. Can my brother? He may. Can we destroy lily pads with our stones? I think so. If we can destroy one or two lily pads with our little stones, may we now heft enormous boulders into the lake? May we heft four or five apiece? No, you may only throw one more, each. Fine, two more. Now you may never throw another rock in the lake again.

Tyrant. At the optometrist’s office, after we left the lake, the doctor dyed my eye yellow, and turned my eyelid inside out. I had stared, since I broke the contact, at my own eyeball for fifteen minutes at a time, trying to locate the clear scrap that was causing me so much pain. It was hidden from me, and only the doctor's methodical searching, his light, the thing that you rest your head in to immobilize it, this dye, was able to discover it. When he did, what relief I felt! But even as relief flowed through me, I had questions for the doctor.