I never would have signed up for this. Not that I’m against it, it’s just so far out of my range of experience. At the end of August, my neighbor called: “Edie, is there any chance you would be willing to host a foreign exchange student? There are six students hoping to come to America; they need a placement in the next five hours.” Given five months, I would’ve had a laundry list, alphabetical, of all my reasons to decline. I told her I would think about it. This was my way of having a bit more time to compose a graceful “no.” When I hung up the phone, I really had to ask myself: what are my reasons? My former husband and I didn’t have children. We were busy with our professional lives. As the years went by, it simply ceased to be a topic of our conversation. When our twenty-year marriage ended, we were both silently grateful we’d never become parents.