And finally, I was born in Aunsbach, Germany and within a few weeks I was separated from my family and the following year found myself in Massachusetts. I had a vague, abstract knowledge that important people were left behind, one of them being my mother. If I thought about her—really just as an emotion in only the most abstract, non-verbal way, I would look up at the sky in the appropriate direction determined by my childish brain, thinking my gaze would go up in the arc of the sky and connect me with her, landing in Germany and on her.