I said: goodnight, Mom.
She said: goodnight.
She went to bed.
In her room.
Across from the bathroom.
With the window that looked onto the backyard.
The garden was dark but it was there.
In the morning I would work in it.
She would sit by the window and watch.
She would offer suggestions.
She would not apologize for the suggestions.
That was the specific hope of it.
The small thing I was working toward.
A seventy-year-old woman who had stopped apologizing for taking up space.
One suggestion at a time.
I went back to the kitchen.
Gabriel was washing the dishes.
He was washing them with the focused attention of a person who is doing a task and who understands that the task is itself a kind of statement.
