There are other things that she could say to me, things I will never hear. I doubt that many mothers say these things to their daughters. Maybe it would be like telling your daughter the truth about the pain of childbirth. They try to protect us, even when we’re middle-aged. So I must supply the words for myself: Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
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