[...] We were making lasagna, my daughter was asleep in the stroller in the hall. I turned on the oven and got a large onion from the pantry, cut the root and the beginnings of a green sprout on the other side. And right then I experienced one of those rare moments where everything is laid out perfectly in front of you: the fact that this was my third writing workshop and I was still stuck; my understanding but puzzled friends; how I’d let others support me; how I’d taken out student loans and bank loans and gotten side jobs in a vain effort to find my way back to that room. I peeled the onion and discarded the rustling skins in the sink, got a cutting board, cleaved the onion in half, and got to work making thin slices. It was suddenly clear to me that this room inside of me had been shuttered a long time ago, at the end of the last century. A simple realization, like seeing the weather through the window: it’s raining. The next insight came on the heels of the first and was just as simple, as crystalline: all my writing efforts were a vain attempt to reach for something that was forever lost. The onion was half-sliced, the decision half-made. The third insight presented itself as an image, an expanse that stretched out before me, void of nagging ambition, of any need for ideas. No plans, no vanity. No constant failure. I gave up; I was free. The words for “forgiveness” and “freedom” are the same in several languages; an obvious point perhaps, but in this moment I realized that “letting go” could be said in the same breath. The slices lay perfect in front of me. Sally looked over. “Is that the onion?” She took the cutting board and brushed it all into the frying pan. “Or are you crying?”