Summary

Ariel begins to feel herself letting go. She wants that feeling to grow. For the first time in her life, she does not have a plan. She still misses her son and wants him back, but she is beginning to move toward acceptance. Although Ariel does not want to live without Lucy in her life, she recognizes their marriage is over. She does not want to give up her home and her garden, she wants to be fertile forever, but she has accepted the inevitability of death. She realizes that despite thinking she had lost everything, she still has hope.

Analysis

In the opening of this chapter, Levy writes that she feels "something very small and very new [...] sending up a shoot inside of me" (204). The shoot beginning to grow returns the garden and plant imagery which has always symbolized the happiest times in...