Going-on 13, Rose is a small but adult height and weighs 97 pounds, most of it hair which descends in a pyramid from a center part and reaches below her waist. A daughter like Rose is a terrific responsibility; almost all she has to do is look at me, wise-eyed and unfocused as a meditating yogi, and I begin to worry how I've failed her. It's not that way with the other children, all boys, younger and normally devoted without that unsettling knack of being inside me. It's Rose's knack that leaves me sleepless all night wondering, when I've done something, What will Rose think of this? Once I heard a psychologist on a talk show say that people get married for the wrong reasons, then stay married for some of the right ones. We have five right ones. James teaches at Cropps Hill, one of New England's venerable lesser known prep schools: he is the entire Classics department. At 40, he is strikingly stern and handsome. He carries his neck stiff and shoulders high, and though it doesn't make sense he backs up when I talk to him as if he fears I'll ask him a favor. I've never called him Jim.

Love is something I hope for, for Rose, when she gets old enough. As for myself, it didn't enter my mind Decoration Day weekend, when we drove to Cape Cod and hired a house for August.