There are ways I could improve myself, but I am also capable. I am not powerless. I am not my past.

I am not the product of other people, not Maggie, or Evelyn, or Ed. I made myself and, if I choose to, I can change. I can imagine myself differently. I can make the imagination real. Who said that? Maybe I did. Not every phrase in my brain belongs to someone else.

Having a child doesn’t make you better than other people, but it did make me better than myself. It made me less self-absorbed, if only because I was suddenly absorbed with Ali. Being absorbed with someone other than yourself must be better than being absorbed with only yourself, but it’s still just one other person, and what needs to happen, what I think is supposed to happen in the progress to becoming a better human is that being a wife to Ed and a mom to Ali is not an end but part of a process, to train me for greater things. Finding yourself no longer alone at the center of your moral universe is only admirable if it helps you imagine committing yourself in other ways, to other things, other than yourself. That seems right. That is the person I want to be. God, I hope I remember this in the morning.