I sat with my mother, and looking and listening to her was like hearing a favorite splendid song. Her smile, in her eyes and her mouth, was an invitation to laugh as she told me stories from when I was my son’s age, when I said things I heard from Ms. Goodlett, our one-time babysitter. She mirrored the expressions in my face, the same ones I chuckle at with the boy these days, the ones I tell Bryce that I gave him. Mama told me stories like they happened just yesterday morning, like she had been remembering them so she could tell them to me, remembering them again for me.