1: Over dinner with my parents recently, my father told my children that from the age of ten to the age of twenty-five, nothing that came out of my mouth could be trusted as fact. This is categorically false.

2: My ex-husband moved out of our home over a late summer weekend in 2012. My sister-in-law invited me and my daughter over to dinner on our first night back in the apartment because she thought it would feel lonely. It wasn’t lonely. It felt safe for the first time in a while. We went to dinner at their house and that felt very much the opposite of lonely, too.

3: In the fall of 1982, I was 8 years old and I was allowed to walk to the grocery store on my corner for the first time. I was meant to buy eggs, milk and bread for Saturday breakfast. I also bought a package of Twinkies and ate them both on the short walk back to my apartment. This event was the first of many clandestine and untamed experiences with food.

4: In 1988, I kissed a boy with tongue for the first time. Within a…