AS A CHILD, I would sit for hours on the squatty brick wall lining my backyard, scratching, scratching, scratching into a ratty old notebook, all cross-outs and arrows and false starts and remember-for-laters only the author could understand. I’d swallow hard. Sigh. Give the sky above a look—please—and, when I needed to, pace on that wall, gently tapping the pencil against my temple until—poof—what was inside fell out.

THE WORDS WERE LIKE AIR: There without my asking, there for the giving and the taking, there to help me breathe. And fleeting, lost on me, if I didn’t remind myself to take note.