An Untamed State

People love a real tragedy when they think it cannot happen to them.

My mother has often told me there are some things you cannot tell a man who loves you, things he cannot handle knowing. She adheres to the philosophy that it is secrets rather than openness that strengthen a relationship between a woman and a man. She believes this even though she is an honest person. Honesty, she says, is not always about the truth.

“It is an amazing thing,” my father once told me after Christophe was born, “how much a child loves a parent. That kind of love terrifies me.”

The devotion of an only child runs so deep.

His openness was frightening. Americans are so fond of confession without considering the consequences.

Sons are different, my mother says. They always look for home somewhere else. Daughters, though, a mother can count on. Daughters always come home.

I often wanted to ask her why my father’s dreams were more important than her own, but the question would have hurt her more than her answer would have helped me.

There’s no room for such distinctions in a country where too many people have to claw for what they need and still have nothing to hold.