She has this thing about lifetimes, like how many of them she’s had. The borders of the lifetimes are fuzzy, but she has a visual in her head, a timeline of colors, birth through age six (she doesn’t remember this lifetime and these colors are not the colors represented in photographs so all we can say about this time is that we don’t know what color it is), first grade through fifth, which is a bright white, sixth grade through high school is yellow, college is all primary colors, her twenties are blue, her early thirties in New York are purple, her late thirties in Chicago are like an orange and pink and purple sunset, her early years with her husband in her early forties are a bright grass green, the last ten years are muted shades of teal and taupe. She has long had the feeling that she’s just getting started, though she begins to have a feeling of being settled after they buy the house. You can’t see the color of now. It might be red. But you can’t really see the color you’re in until you’re in the next color.