Daniel, Nathan, and James.
They are twenty-nine, twenty-six, and twenty-one now.
They are large and loud and specific in the way of men who grew up in a house that encouraged them to be themselves.
Daniel is an engineer.
Nathan plays guitar in a band and is also, quietly, a very good accountant, which is the specific combination of a person who knows what they love and what they need.
James is finishing his degree in environmental science.
I am proud of all three of them with the specific unreserved pride of a parent who has watched someone become themselves.
But sometimes, in the years after James left home, I would see a small girl somewhere, at the grocery store or at a park, and there would be a moment, just a moment, where the drawer would open.
My name is Ellen Marsh.
I am fifty-one years old.
I am a high school biology teacher, which is a job that has given me twenty-three years of specific satisfaction and which I intend to do for as many more years as my body allows.
My husband Michael is an administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital, which is the regional hospital fourteen minutes from our house.
He is fifty-four and has been at the hospital for sixteen years and has the quality of someone who is very good at a job that requires the management of people and processes simultaneously, which is a rare combination and which is one of the reasons I fell in love with him, the competence of it, the specific way he moved through complicated situations without becoming overwhelmed by them.
We have been married for twenty-five years.
We are, by any reasonable measure, a very solid unit.
