The present is by common definition the instant between the not yet and the already, a moment as narrow and treacherous as a tightrope. But you might instead define it as all that is remembered by those who are currently alive. A version of the now ends when living memory gives way to secondhand memory or recorded history — when the last veteran of a war dies, or a language loses its last fluent speakers. As long as such witnesses are on hand, the now is something bigger than it seems.

Which brings me to Mary Elizabeth Philips, whom I…