When I was in second grade, I jumped out of a tree in the woods near my home. I landed on my feet, but the ground was uneven, so I put my hands out to help break my fall. Instead of finding bare dirt, or dried leaves, or gnarled roots, my right hand landed hard on the shards of an old beer bottle. Brown glass plunged deep into the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb.

I had had injuries before, of course. Bumps, bruises, cuts, sprains. But all those were the sorts of things that, given time, simply went away. Up to that point, healing had always meant that things get restored to the way they were before. Good as new. This gash on my hand was different. It would not just go away with time. Things were not ever going to be the way they were before. It would never be “good as new.”