Summary

The story begins with a quotation from T.S Eliot's "Four Quartets": "And the children in the apple-tree/ Not known, because not looked for..." (83). As the story begins, the narrator thinks that she will always remember this one thing, unclear at the time, and is proven both right and wrong. She is in Florida in January, working part-time as a home health aide for senior citizens, where she develops a valuable reputations as a good listener. In the meanwhile, she plans to collect kumquats from the trees in her yard and make marmalade from them, while also thinking if she were the kind of person who would not know when something is over. The low cost of living in Florida allows her to live a frugal life with her income, part of the reason she moved from New York. She had worked...