“Looking at the calendar of Ravidas, and the photograph beside it of the grandchildren she had yet to meet, she raised the package like a chalice to her wrinkled forehead. She lowered it again and held it against her rising and falling puny chest and just breathed and hoped the seconds would last, like the flickering hope she still held that her son would reclaim her, as she had once reclaimed a manja, restoring to its gnarled limbs a reason for living. There was always hope when the post arrived.”