[...] Birgitte wasn’t particularly adorable anymore, but everything that appealed to these men’s instincts to help, shore up, guide, and understand, was still there. I no longer lived at home and didn’t see her a lot during this period, but my sister was there and she told me about the men she bumped into in the kitchen eating filmjölk in the mornings, the men she encountered when they rang the doorbell late at night with flowers in hand. Birgitte was able to pick and choose, though that’s probably not how she experienced it, and some men stayed for a month while others had to slouch off as the night wore on, the flowers they’d brought left in a vase on the kitchen table. In hindsight it might look like she had the upper hand, suitors competing for her favor, but of course their protection had terms. There were clauses to their goodwill. Her anxiety could seem so crazy, so deranged and psychiatric and primitive, but outside our family, meaning the family made up by her, my sister, me, and our dad, she was able to tame it into the range of what’s considered normal. This lifelong undertaking, the effort to make her instability seem normal, was her life’s great struggle, the great stipulation for being touched by the love of others. [...]