I think I realised then a little of what Michael had meant, but I still did not entirely grasp it. Another flaw of age and the habit of being the boss: I had not wondered what Annie might desire from me in exchange for what I wanted from her—after all, a few favours here and there are nothing when set against the great debt that is ancestry. More: I had not stopped to ask how she might think to reshape the world using me as a lever, because it had not occurred to me that she might shape the world at all. I was the mover and the shaper—by habit, by precedence and by custom. The world formed itself around my experiences and decisions, not those of a young seedling who had after all not existed until I was a great oak.