I stared at my mother, mouth open, for a few seconds as I tried to figure out what exactly I had done. There had been a time when “breathing” might have been the right answer, at least in my mind, but over the past year or more, we had gotten closer and closer as she loosened up her expectations for her daughter and as my business got more and more successful. By some twist of universal goodness, my goals and hers were aligning, which helped heal a few decades of distance between us.
Now, though, the look on her face was the exact same one she had worn countless times when I had told her things about my life that disappointed her – that I was going to be a nonprofit fundraiser, that I was moving to San Francisco, that I had left my negligent husband, that I was opening a bookstore – I cou
