As with all trauma, pain offers the difficult blessing of causing one’s world to become incredibly small. All the details and to-do lists evaporate and life slows to a centered simplicity, as in, “Let’s see if I can manage to lie down without crying.”

Two weeks ago my daughter and I had a nasty little tumble from my bicycle, which plopped us rudely onto Third Street and left us battered and bruised. Being five, Sophia recovered at the speed of light. Being some decades past five, I am still purple and in pain.