My mother, dying, observes her fifty-year marriage, says, "We could have been more gentle with each other." And I watch my father slumped in a chair by her bed, reaching finally, when she gives in to sleep, to touch her hand pale against the white sheet.

There's a quiet, like water calming.

On a picnic thirty years ago, I sit on a yellow bedspread fitting black olives on each of my fingers. A more formal time, my mother wears a blue voile dress & high heels that aerate the soft dirt near the shore at Fallen Leaf Lake. When my parents begin to argue, I chew the ...

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