Mother wanted a good life, with lace tablecloths and marmalade. Instead, we smeared jam on a linoleum table. She consoled herself by thinking that if blessings came too soon we would only run roughshod over the manners and heirlooms that made a miter’s corner out of life. She would wait for my father to bear us up, slowly, strongly, like a hymn. Occasionally, when Dad belted up his trousers with twine, she turned as brittle as snapbread, but in those early years, she was usually willing to dismiss our days as the pruning from which decorous bloom must one day erupt.