Shame won’t make you quit smoking. Love might

If you’re lucky, you stumble upon people who’d like you around for a long time

Photo by Dimitri Bong on Unsplash

My first memory of my Aunt Mary involves a rattlesnake and a meat cleaver. I was maybe seven years old when my cousins and I found the rattlesnake near a stack of cardboard boxes in her garage. It was barely 9 a.m. and we ran inside to find her already in full makeup and a silk housecoat, a cigarette dangling from her li…