Growing up, I heard it constantly: "Oh, you must have been so lonely as an only child." People would look at my friend Emma with this mix of pity and concern, as if she'd been raised by wolves instead of loving parents. They'd ask if she wished for siblings, assuming her childhood was some tragic tale of isolation and imaginary friends.
I left New York and moved back to Florida without a plan. My younger daughter offered me a mobile home on her property to stay in while I figured it out. I moved in and didn't move out. It felt just right. It is small and easy for me to take care of. It's the perfect size to fit the things I hold dear. I call it "The Teapot."
But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would actually be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. So I said yes and it turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.
Mabel Wells - or Memmie, to her family - lived her entire life in rural Kentucky. During the hourlong drive to her house, my younger sister and I counted cows and tried to guess which field went with what crop. Mabel was born in 1909, at a time when the Titanic was being built, World War I was still five years away,
Throughout my life, even as a child, my desire was for independence and dignity. I have always wanted to make my own choices, from what I eat and wear, and where I live, to who my friends are, and even who I vote for.
