The children were better at falling than I. They adapted to their new school, for the first time the same one. Josh took to athletics, finding that besides the joy of it, the issue of his skin color was solved by his success. He was strong and big and never unenlisted in whatever season's sport it was. And they had their grandparents who were both hands on, especially my mother. After school, when I was still at work, they had their flesh and blood to come home to.

I fell for a young assistant professor in my department who was newly separated and heading for divorce. He was irresistible - tall, gorgeous, and bright as a steel trap. Looking back, I think he was really just confidence building, dallying, never moving toward a permanent connection. I pressed up against his respectability and backburnered thoughts of a future like the one I might have had long ago with that first doomed teenaged marriage, or like my mother once thought she would have where everything would look and feel exactly right. Trying to keep our relationship low profile, we snuck into each other's lives like culprits.