This chapter was about meaning, and relationships, and hope. The book as a whole is quite intimate and this chapter zeroes in on aspects of intimacy, and the little surprises in life that can be so moving, such as receiving a letter from a friend, or spotting a flamingo in the middle of the Great Basin. Williams weaves the thread of hope through the chapter, detailing her mothers’ advice to a family friend and her own conclusions after confronting her mother’s cancer. She likens the mirage of a lake on searing desert sands to “hope on a hot day” where someone else interpreted the phenomenon as a reflection of life’s uncertainty. Williams argues for the irrational, the empirical, the qualities that can’t be defined by statistics. For her, hope is perfectly valid. She praises the diversity of probabilities and is inspired by the flamingos at Great Salt Lake– the odds of them coming to Utah were not high yet they came. The odds of her mother surviving her cancer, as described in another chapter, were not high, yet Mrs. Tempest was determined to survive.
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