“There will always be children and there will always be old people. We spend most of our lives somewhere in between . . . but of course each of us is infinite.”— Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World

One. It’s August 9th and I’m flying home to see family. I’m congratulating myself on a summer well-spent in New York—I didn’t get fired from a job I liked, I watched Seth Meyers bake with Martha Stewart live*, I got better at telling my eating disorder (instead of my dietitian) to fuck off—and...