The other morning I sat in the pre-dawn darkness on my porch, wrapped up against the cold, staring at the stars with their piercing, distant magnificence. I listened to invisible raccoons running through the trees, saw the inky outline of the branches bending under their weight. I heard the soft clopping of deer hooves, and then the owl’s resonant, echoing call in the middle distance.

I had a boyfriend in college who knew from his first breath that he wanted to be a lawyer. I was hugely envious of this: he was so directed, his course so clear. I had no idea what I wanted to do, or who I was. This boyfriend used to say that I had a lot of stars in my heaven, a poetic way of saying that I was directionless.