Apples, onions, children, and a bucket of dahlias. My worries came home with us, too. As I approach forty-six, a harvest afternoon and the words of Gwendolyn Brooks bring me back to the question of flourishing: what we gather, what we give one another, and what keeps opening in an imperfect world.
Other people have a way of ruining the tidy versions of ourselves. They bring histories we did not inherit, needs we did not anticipate, and truths that rearrange the furniture. It is one thing to imagine a world with room for everyone. It is another to stand beside someone when doing so changes where you are welcome.
