Still, some nights I grieved. I grieved as much at what I knew must be the fleeting nature of my present happiness as any loss, any past. We lived on some edge, if we ever lived on a rolling plain. Who knew what attack, what illness. That doubleness again. Like flying: the stillness and speed, serenity and danger.

We want to get them excited about flying.

You held out your hand, and I took it without stopping to make sense of what I was doing. For the first time in almost a century, I felt hope.

When I got out of college, I had to make a living, and I started writing for magazines, and it felt like the perfect job.

There might not be a measure of happiness left in a life, but there could be beauty and grace and endless love.

Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious.