and stop speaking to people for several hours. Friday, I had already promised to meet a colleague. I almost offered to cancel, then remembered what it would mean to begin treating the rest of my life as disposable.
“Sunday afternoon?” I asked.
She smiled.
“Sunday works.”
There was no injury in her voice because I had not been available every moment. No insistence that wanting to see someone required abandoning the ordinary needs that made a person pleasant to be around.
I had not realized how much relief that could
