YOU MUST be wondering about my strange way of telling a story, constantly shifting around, twisting back and forth in time even though my life has been lived as yours is being lived, in a progression of days. What I’m doing is unraveling a great tangle of twine, found in an old basket at the bottom of a dark closet. There are many strings, balled together. I pull on one; it yields, then binds. I pull harder; it gives a little more, bringing up with it another string, of another size, color, and texture. So the strands of my life intermingle; they cannot be separated into a succession of “and then I dids.” I can only offer you various lengths extracted from various times in the jumble of my days, none completely free of all others, none unattached. Recounting bare events explains little; meanings come from connections—and from endings. Associations, turning up like the dummy card in stud poker, bring triumph, regret, and understanding. The links of meaning are always more relevant than those of time. For this reason, events that took place fifty years ago stand out vividly in my memory, whereas I can’t remember what I did last week. I do not hope to untangle the whole ball; it is snarled and knotted and mildewed by time. To know it all … Whoever has? Who can?

I’ve often thought: Oh, if I could only have looked ahead and seen the consequences of what I was about to do. But the evidence of the cost of each step into the unknown—what might be gained, what lost—was all there, just below the surface. I didn’t look long enough or hard enough, or I didn’t dare look at all.