But suddenly, kneeling here, I saw my life differently. It would always be fragmented, broken in two. I would find my parents' faces in a crowd, but they would be watching me separately. They would be holding hands with other people. They would be making different lives. And I would always be choosing, taking sides, feeling bad no matter which parent I left behind. My life would be full of train rides that left one of them waving good-bye and one of them waiting for me on the other end.
     This wasn't the life I would have chosen for myself. But I saw that my choices lay ahead of me. In this matter my parents had decided. They had fallen away from each other, and I would forever be somewhere stretched between them.