This essay was published in the Kenyon Review in 2025. I’m sharing it here because I’m tired of emailing people the PDF, plus the re-publishing restriction period lifted. Though it came out fairly recently, it was written a long time ago1; only with great self-control did I ban myself from rewriting completely while formatting in the CMS.
It’s fundamentally a personal story about a relative, but it also circles questions I’ve been asking for a decade now: How much should a medical diagnosis reshape the past? How much does biology require reconciliation?
For hours, my mother talks to the dolls. She’s lined the three of them up on the couch in the living room, the way a child might before lecturing inanimate guests about proper behavior at the afternoon’s make-believe tea party. Each time I walk by on my way to grab a glass of water from the kitchen or do laundry in the garage, I can hear her babbling.
