You can stare right at something and not see what lies beneath the surface.
That’s standard procedure for officer safety. We didn’t know that was Ms. Jefferson’s son. We saw a large, angry Black youth who was visibly upset.
Over the years, he’s learned empathy the way I might learn Greek, translating an image or situation in the clearinghouse of his mind and trying to attach the appropriate sentiment to it, but never really fluent in the language.
Dealing with an autistic meltdown is like dealing with a tornado. Once you are close enough to see it coming, there’s nothing to do but weather the storm.
All of my memories were laced with him; to extract them would mean losing the flavor of my childhood.
Are we gonna talk about it, or are we gonna pretend nothing’s wrong?
The best thing is what you think should be done. The rightest thing is what needs to be done-when you think not just of you and how you feel, but also the extra stuff-who else is involved, and what’s happened before, and what the rules say.
But you know, the word ignorance has an even more important word at its heart: ignore. And I don’t think it’s right to ignore the truth any longer.
What’s beautiful, gray, and wears glass slippers? Cinderelephant.
If you are a mother, you must have someone to take care of. If that someone is taken from you, whether it is a newborn or an individual old enough to have offspring of its own, can you still call yourself a mother?
The more complex a behavior is, the more rigorous and complicated the science behind it. Math, chemistry, that’s the easy stuff – closed models with discrete answers. To understand behavior – human or elephant – the systems are far more complex, which is why the science behind them must be that much more intricate. But.
Needless to say, we all hate Fisher Carrington. Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to Hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver, insult added to injury.
Why are elephants wrinkled? They don’t fit on the ironing board.
Institutions are allowed to scrutinize their personnel and find and label every flaw – but no one ever turns the magnifying glass back on them.
When my mother was in the hospital,” I say, “her rabbi told her a story. In Heaven and Hell, people sit at banquet tables filled with amazing food, but no one can bend their elbows. In Hell, everyone starves because they can’t feed themselves. In Heaven, everyone’s stuffed, because they don’t have to bend their arms to feed each other.
You cannot be a born psychic and not believe in the power of signs. Sometimes it’s the traffic that makes you miss your flight, which winds up crashing into the Atlantic. Sometimes it’s the single rose that blooms in a garden full of weeds. Or sometimes it’s the girl you dismissed, who haunts your sleep.
Fake it until you make it, she said.
When it came down to it, at the end, you did not think. You felt. What did she feel? That you will never cease to underestimate yourself. That love is fleeting. That life is a miracle.
If you hurt, cry. If you rage, strike out. If you hope, get ready for a disappointment.
There are a lot of people who’d wonder how on earth a 5-year-old can remember what happened to her when she was 3. God, Nathaniel can’t even tell me what he did yesterday.