Chapter 15

Summary

• Yara was picking up her daughters, Jude and Mira, from school after their gymnastics class.
• Jude was excited to share with Yara that her art teacher had displayed her painting of the family having a picnic in the school hallway.
• The painting omitted their father, who Jude noted was always at work, bringing up feelings of Yara's own childhood experiences of her father's absence.
• To lift spirits, Yara suggested they make a quick stop at the park before going home, where they have a twenty-minute break.
• At the park, as the girls played, Yara reflected on the joy of her daughters and took photos of them playing on the swings and jungle gym.
• Yara hoped her daughters would remember their childhood fondly, contemplating the sacrifices she made to give them stability and happiness.
• Watching her daughters, Yara's thoughts drifted to her own childhood with her mother, who was often distant and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of parenting.
• A memory of a winter trip to see Christmas lights in Brooklyn when Yara was a child emerges. Yara's persistent calls to her mother for attention result in her mother slapping her, a moment deeply etched in Yara's memory.
• Back in the present, Mira's requests for Yara to play with her trigger the flood of these painful memories, and Yara momentarily lashes out in anger at her daughters' pleas for attention.
• Realizing her mistake and the parallels between her reaction and her mother's, Yara immediately apologizes to her daughters and joins them in play, but she remains emotionally overwhelmed by the incident.