“I decide to go outside to enjoy the weather. Out of the corner of my eye I see Thor pushing an empty wheelbarrow, and I wonder if it’s some sort of thought experiment. Either he just got done dumping mulch in the back yard, or this is a great set up for a Zen koan.”

“Thor pushes the empty wheelbarrow by me and I decide to say something. “Wheelbarrows are great, huh? They make even the lightest loads lighter. Too bad nobody’s invented a wheelbarrow yet that could carry man’s emotional burden.”

“But Spencer is here, after all. He stands at the back, just outside his office. “What happened?” he asks.My eyes burn from the pelting rain and the salt of my tears. “It’s raining,” I say, as if it weren’t completely obvious.“And you decided to lay out in it?”

“You are livin’,” she says in feigned exasperation. “You just don’t see what I see. You got something special. Something you got from your ma. It’s a thing. I mean, I wish I had it. It’s this thing where you know what it’s going to take, and then you get it done. You push yourself and you get there.”

“But then I think Viola -I think of her out there -And I push it back -I feel my hands on the floor -I use them to rise to my knees -I lift my head -To see the Mayor's surprised face only a yard or so away, coming toward me, something in his hand-"Goodness," he says, sounding almost cheerful. "Even stronger than I thought.”

“But it was a significant exercise, for it meant that I considered myself worthy, as I had never done before. That change in my consciousness was so bewildering that I looked back on my previous life with a sort of amazed pity. That narrowness, those scruples, that prolonged childhood... I even, and this is a great test, began to consider journeys I might make, for my own pleasure, without him. I had never been to Greece and I thought I might go now, some time soon. And I knew that if I went I should enjoy it, as I had never enjoyed a journey before. Because I should have James to come back to. By the very fact of his existence, he had given the validity to my entire future.”