I pull up to a red light alongside a car driven by a man about my age, bearded, wearing a cowboy hat, staring straight ahead — at the light, or the lights in his head. Next to him is an older woman — his mother, I imagine — thin, with hollowed cheeks, staring vacantly too, but with a face more composed, peaceful, sanded smooth by the years. Or so I imagine — imagining too the man as an infant in her arms, her rosy cheeks beaming with that peculiar pride that seems absurd until we become parents ourselves; I see tears, insolence, worry, the root and flower of karma: the son arising from his mother who falls back at last into the strong arms of the son, time making the little tragedies laughable and the joyous memories sorrowful, because they’re past, gone, a light changing.