A sore hip. A hesitation in calling a name, finding a word. A slight but persistent difficulty now, getting the page where I can see it comfortably as I read. The quality of the light has changed somehow.

It’s November, and I am forty-seven, a newly single mother, driving home to North Carolina from a conference in Pittsburgh, where I spoke with other women writers on a panel called “A Wilderness of Her Own.” It’s drizzling in West Virginia, and I’m gazing at the fog and branches around me almost to my peril…