By Annalise Grueter: I’ve been lying about my first kiss for over half my life. The official narrative is the one that sounds good, interesting. Cinematic. How the got-hot-one-day older brother of a friend dropped me off for a babysitting job, was patient when I shyly ducked my head. How he put his strong hand under my jaw and looked at me with sweet cerulean eyes and put his lips on mine. How my sister-in-law saw from her living-room window and teased me about it. I spent hours in a daze. ...

By Annalise Grueter: When I thought about my mid-thirties, I always imagined life being defined by little feet. Bright eyes in small rosy faces, dirty hands, and inimitable high voices by turns loud, demanding and soft, impossibly sweet. I thought days would be a carousel of pre- and elementary-school pickups and drop-offs, tiny dancers and soccer cleats, aggressive snuggles and small bodies caught in maelstroms of emotion, the bedside passing forward of lullabies from my own youth. It never...