Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments

My mother looked curiously at me. "Why were you afraid of him?" she asked. "You could knock him over with one hand."

"Ma, he didn't look like that twelve years ago. Believe me."

She continued to stare after him as he shambled down Broadway, bumping into people left and right.

"You're growing old together," she said to me. "You and what frightens you."