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Start by con­sid­er­ing the end­ing. And con­sid­er the struc­ture, too. As I wrote Because the World Is Round, a mem­oir about my family’s trip around the world in 1970, a stur­dy nar­ra­tive arc emerged. The sto­ry begins with the sale of our fam­i­ly auto­mo­bile brake-repair busi­ness in Dal­las, and the action ris­es and falls as we trav­el togeth­er — India, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Yugoslavia, Europe — and I explore my rela­tion­ship with my moth­er, who was par­a­lyzed by polio and used a wheel­chair. The book con­cludes decades lat­er, when my moth­er is dying, and I sit at her bed­side, watch her sleep, and pon­der the extra­or­di­nary life she has led. How for­tu­nate I was to come upon a struc­ture that could hold in place the moth­er-daugh­ter sto­ry I want­ed to tell.

But the more I wrote, the more I rec­og­nized that it was only the trav­el nar­ra­tive — mov­ing from place to place — that had a dis­cernible begin­ning, mid­dle, and end. The real sto­ry, the devel­op­ment of my unique inter­de­pen­dence with my moth­er, shift­ed shape and resist­ed the lim­i­ta­tions of a clean nar­ra­tive arc. Some mem­o­ries of our trip deep­ened, and oth­ers lost sig­nif­i­cance alto­geth­er. Danc­ing on stage at the finale of Hair! in Lon­don was a fad­ing fun fact of my life until it became emblem­at­ic of my new­ly lib­er­at­ed spir­it. Push­ing my moth­er up a load­ing-dock ramp to enter a Neiman Mar­cus seemed like a mun­dane part of shop­ping, until I real­ized how this lack of access was an assault on her dignity.

The process of writ­ing taught me how the pas­sage of time and the accu­mu­la­tion of new expe­ri­ences allow for end­less­ly reveal­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of the past. Inter­pre­ta­tions that don’t stop. Inter­pre­ta­tions that cir­cle and spin like the wheels of my mother’s chair. I learned that there was noth­ing sta­t­ic about the real sto­ry I longed to tell. There is no end to it. In fact, the sto­ry is that the sto­ry has no end. So I am not going to stop here with a final peri­od, as if this sto­ry has a neat fin­ish,” I begin the final para­graph of the book, before clos­ing the last page with a ques­tion mark.

And in the act of writ­ing, I learned that there is no answer to the how” of our rela­tion­ship; there is only an ever-deep­en­ing descrip­tion of our devo­tion and shared expe­ri­ences. Today our rela­tion­ship means this. Tomor­row, with new expe­ri­ence and insight, it means that. All of it is true.

Now imag­ine my sur­prise after I send my man­u­script off to the pub­lish­er, and pick up Dara Horn’s then new Peo­ple Love Dead Jews. Embed­ded in her essays about Jew­ish life and anti­semitism is Chap­ter Five: Fic­tion­al Dead Jews.” Here Horn exam­ines the West­ern lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, which strives for coher­ent and sat­is­fy­ing end­ings — ones where the pro­tag­o­nist is either saved or expe­ri­ences an epiphany, a moment of grace. This is not the Jew­ish lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, Horn argues. Sto­ries in the Jew­ish canon, as she metic­u­lous­ly demon­strates, actu­al­ly didn’t have end­ings at all.” These are works with­out con­clu­sions. They don’t offer us end­ings, but present us with begin­nings, with ongo­ing search­es for mean­ing. Jew­ish sto­ries, she con­cludes, are about the pow­er of resilience and endurance to car­ry one through to that meaning.”

Had Dara Horn read my man­u­script? No. Had I inad­ver­tent­ly stum­bled my way into a deeply root­ed Jew­ish tra­di­tion? No comment.

With my book, I set out to explore how my moth­er man­aged to raise a fam­i­ly, pur­sue a career, and trav­el the world from her wheel­chair. I won­dered what role I played in her suc­cess and how her dis­abil­i­ty affect­ed my devel­op­ment. I dis­cov­ered a nar­ra­tive struc­ture, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. And in the act of writ­ing, I learned that there is no answer to the how” of our rela­tion­ship; there is only an ever-deep­en­ing descrip­tion of our devo­tion and shared expe­ri­ences. Today our rela­tion­ship means this. Tomor­row, with new expe­ri­ence and insight, it means that. All of it is true. In oth­er words: In writ­ing a mem­oir that refus­es to end, I align myself with a deeply ingrained Jew­ish point of view. I dis­cov­er for myself that insight is infi­nite and mean­ing is endless.

So, I implore, embrace the spir­it of Jew­ish sto­ry­telling. Con­sid­er the end­ing. Look at the struc­ture. Then, ask ques­tions. Push them until they mul­ti­ply, then allow them to fade unan­swered. Let your world spin like a wheel. Attach your­self to char­ac­ters and laugh. Or cry. Or just stare into space. Enjoy a good Jew­ish sto­ry with­out (an) end—

Jane Sag­i­naw is a stu­dent in the Ph.D. Pro­gram in Lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las. Her mem­oir, Because the World is Round, recounts a fam­i­ly trip around the world in 1970 with her moth­er who was wheel­chair-bound from polio. Before return­ing to grad­u­ate school, Jane was a tri­al lawyer with Baron and Budd in Dal­las, Texas. She lat­er served in the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion as the Region­al Admin­is­tra­tor of the U. S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, Region Six. In 2006, she was award­ed Trail Lawyer of the Year by Tri­al Lawyers for Pub­lic Jus­tice for her envi­ron­men­tal work involv­ing ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Tuc­son, Ari­zona. Jane’s under­grad­u­ate degree is in cul­tur­al geog­ra­phy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. Her law degree is from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin. Her essays and poet­ry have been pub­lished in Athenaeum Review and are forth­com­ing in Image, D Mag­a­zine, and PB Dai­ly.