“One day, when Eve was in the eighth grade, she had pretended to have cramps and had been allowed to sit out on the sidelines. She was sitting on a bench, absorbed in reading Plato's Republic for the third time. Her mother called to her and asked her to hold the long rope hanging from the ceiling while she showed some girls in the class how to shinny up it. Her mother never gave up trying to drag Eve into the physical world. Every day after school, when Clare and her mother went to field hockey practice, Eve would rush back to the seminary just in time to attend her father's class on Systematic Theology. Eve prided herself on being totally out of shape and joked about not wanting any more muscles in her body than were absolutey necessary to enable her to turn a page in The Republic.

When Eve pretended not to hear her mother's request to hold the rope for her, her mother asked another girl in the gym class to do it. Eve peered over her book for a second to watch her mother climbing up the rope toward the ceiling. Despite being slightly overweight, her mother was very strong and agile. As she got almost to the top, the girl holding the rope at the bottom was suddenly knocked off her feet by a basketball careening through the air from the other end of the gym. The rope was jerked out of the girl's hand and spun out into the air. Up near the ceiling, Eve's mother lost her balance and began to fall. She grasped for the rope as she fell, but she and the rope were spinning away from each other in opposite directions and she couldn't regain her grip.

The Republic dropped out of Eve's hands with a thud when her mother hit the ground. All the girls began screaming and looking over at Eve. But Eve was paralyzed. She couldn't get up to go over to her mother, who lay perfectly still on the floor of the gym.

When the ambulance arrived, her mother was already dead. She had died the moment she hit the floor. There was no blood, and no external sign of injury. As they carried her mother out on the stretcher, Eve noticed she looked like she was sleeping. Eve reached down and picked up The Republic. The school nurse came over and led Eve out of the gym. Eve kept one finger in The Republic so as not to lose her place.”

Eve's Longing: The Infinite Possibilities in All Things, Deborah McKay