I am rowing. I am rowing, though the wind pushes me back.

— Anne Sexton, from Rowing

1.
I am paging through a book when I find my past. In a photo snapped years ago, on film, back in the days of one good shot and delayed mortification.

We are squinting, my mother and I, though the sun is behind us and the years of tears are still close. We are squeezing smiles, ready for the bond to break, always a thin thread quick to fray.

This is how you find a photo after memory has made you bitter and worn.

2.
I am tired of the work of reading the weather of you and you and you. All the yous I know and love. And neighbors and strangers, every path I cross an exercise I can’t turn off. Absorb, absorb, absorb.

Without trying or wanting, I take the temperature of a body that slumps, a hitch in a voice, a slow drawl, a rapid ramble. With each sharp tone or a conspiratorial whisper, my shoulders rise, jaw tightens, breathing shallows. How loud is a glance. A sigh is a storm.

3.
I do not want this power that has so little value. I hate the way I hear everything you do not say.

“But did you have fun?” a friend asks when I return exhausted from a party.

“Yes,” I lie. “It was fun.”

4.
How do other people do this?

Float from event to event, person to person? Energized and buoyant? How do you not carry the weight of every person you meet?

After my father died, after the initial tidal wave of grief, I felt a lightness that lasted for weeks, then months. The years of worry slid away and I felt a floating. I thought it might last forever.

5.
Last week, while cleaning my desk, I found the photo taken three decades ago, my mom and me, arms gingerly entwined, our bodies still strong, smiling.

It happened so rarely, physical affection, and seeing the photo I remember that I had forgotten the good things: the hike, the rowboat, the crisp autumn air, how we liked each other, how that day we felt a rare ease.

6.
Maybe there is more and I’m ready to see more moments like this, a life like this: easy and real.

Maybe I can wear the weather, both sun and storm, and know I am more than I feel right now.