As I spread the buttercream frosting from the belly of the Boheme cake to its outermost edge, a habitual worry cut the silence between my mother and I who, exhausted from the day's Passover preparations, leaned against the marble kitchen counter. I asked her: “Do you think I’m going to do something meaningful with my life?” My mom, for whom existential questioning was a luxury for a day with a shorter to-do list, paused to tend to my mid-twenties angst: “Martha, think of wha

Kneeling against the sun-warmed marble of Marcel Proust's tombstone at Pere Lachaise Cemetery, a quote that had buried itself in the tomb of my college memory, asked to be resurrected. That night on the red rug of my hotel room, I tracked down a Word document titled “Passages from Time Regained. Like breathe leaving a body on the operating table to examine the utilitarian worth of its own survival, Proust contemplates in this passage the social value of his life’s writing). T