Strange as this Weather Has Been

Lace thinks back to her quick transformation from teenager to adult, remembering her pregnancy and sudden motherhood: “I did almost all my growing up right then. All that growing up pressed together so that each moment held several years, and you can see it in my face, and in my body, too, if you look at pictures of me before and after” (137). When Bant is born, Lace gives her own last name. This makes Jimmy so mad that he refuses to see Lace or the baby for three weeks after her birth.

Eventually, Jimmy comes around occasionally to see Lace and Bant. At first, he’s hesitant to hold her, but Lace’s mom talks him into it. Lace continues searching for plants in the woods with her mom, and she also brings baby Bant along, although she has to stop frequently to breastfeed her. As Bant grows up, Lace feels like she’s changing for the better because of her.

Lace thinks that she was the happiest in her life during the summer of Bant’s infancy: “Despite all the heaviness in me, that summer I also found a fragile happiness I’d never had before. It was partly the love that Bant had shaped in me […] Partly though, I have to admit, it was what grew in me for Jimmy” (141).