We moved out of the only house I ever knew when I was in third grade. I was eight years old. There’s a grief in that. One that is not really acknowledged by the people around you, who are all doing their best to get through the day with work and school and their own disruptions that swept them up, too. People ask me all the time what’s it like growing up in a big family? (Usually asked by someone who has no siblings, or just one.) they always answer for me: it must have been fun, you were never alone. It’s not what you think. Do you know the fable about the blind men trying to describe an elephant? Each has a hand on a different piece imaging the whole by just touching a part? That was us. Each with our own experience of the much larger thing Nine people together but still living all alone.