Summary

Part 1, Chapter 7

Nora says that she went to college in Middlebury Vermont. She studied art and planned to live an independent life. Her mother was thirty-one when Nora was born, and Nora thinks about her mother’s happiness. She wonders whether her mother was living the life she had wanted to live. When Nora was seven, her mother had a breakdown and made Nora promise that she would never get stuck in an unhappy marriage. Nora says that she has always tried to understand how her mother resigned herself to her life. When her mother was diagnosed with ALS, Nora put her dreams of making art on hold and took care of her for four years. Her mother died.

Part 1, Chapter 8

Nora says that her mother took years to die. She says that her parents never asked her to give...