I could have been forty-something myself and it would have all seemed normal. This is her new normal and so it is mine. She is practicing for a contest and I want to hide. The brown suede sectional in the living room is disassembled and stacked in a corner, like puzzle pieces fresh from the box. My sister sits on its cushions and watches. I am to be part of the act.

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My grandmother, in her Golden years, was a collage artist. I remember the stacks of magazines she kept—Life, Time, Parade. Not to read, but to tear apart. Rip. Shred. Whole pages. Single words. Pictures of whatever caught her eye and would fit together with strokes of paint, watercolor, cotton, wire, and wood. She called it mixed media; I called it art.

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