I looked at him in the morning light.
"Your turn," he said.
I thought.
"The naming," I said. "When I stood at the front of the room. I had prepared what I was going to say — two weeks of notes, actual written notes, because I wanted to say it correctly." I paused. "When I stood there and looked at her and then at the room — at you and Marisol and Emory and Eleanor, all of you having arrived at that point from completely different routes — the notes went away. I couldn't remember a word."
"You spoke for seven minutes," he said.
"I know," I said. "It came from somewhere else. Not the prepared version." I held his gaze. "The actual version was: this child is mine, and this family is mine, and this room is mine, and I am allowed to be here. Fully. Without tracking how much space I take up
