As the wise wisely instruct us to count our blessings—which I do—I also can’t help but wonder how to sustain this sense of gratitude through the undulations of daily domestic life when so many of our homes balloon not only with love and recognition but also with stress, turbulence, even violence, from forces within and without. If this question is rhetorical, it’s because I don’t want anyone—including myself—to feel that they’re doing kinship wrong if and when it hurts. Today, for me, it hurts. It is sweet, and it hurts. I think it hurt sometimes for Ginzburg, too, and it’s not clear to me that it could have been different, even if she knew all that was to come.
Needull in a haystack 