The truth is, I knew loss. I didn’t know grief. Now, I do.
Life was impossibly fragile. If you were lucky enough to have a loving family, you had to hold onto them with infinite.
Two kinds of flocks come up to Alaska, Cora. People running to something and people running away from something. The second kind-you want to keep your eye out for them.
It was the truest fact of her world. She loved everything about this man, his smile, the way he mumbled in his sleep and laughed after a sneeze and sang opera in the shower. She.
Regret, I know, is a powerful remainder; it can bring the strongest man to his knees.
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. – ALBERT CAMUS.
I’d always believed that the truth of a person was easily spotted, a line drawn in dark ink on white paper. Now, I wonder. Maybe the truth of who we are lies hidden in all those shades of gray that everyone talks about.
In real life, she saw, it wasn’t like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world.
There was a parking ticket on her windshield. She rolled down her window and reached out, yanking the paper from beneath the rusted windshield wiper. She wadded it into a ball and tossed it out the window. To her mind, ticketing this rattrap and expecting to get paid was like leaving a bill on the pillow at a homeless shelter.
That evening, after dinner, Leni sat on her twin bed, reading. The Stand by Stephen King. In the past week, she’d read three books by him and discovered a new passion. Goodbye science fiction and fantasy, hello horror. She figured it was a reflection of her inner life. She’d rather have nightmares about Randall Flagg or Carrie or Jack Torrance than about her own past.
By the time she reached her floor, Ruby was wheezing so badly she sounded like Shelley Winters after her swim in The Poseidon Adventure, and she was practically that wet. Sweat slid down her forehead and caught on her eyelashes, blurring everything.
Liam tried to imagine what it must be like to have a mother like this. What a power it must grant a person in life to have a place where you could always land softly, even after the hardest hit.
This is my resolution for the New Year. I will be honest with myself. I’ll keep my eyes open. I’ll see what’s there, not just what I want to see.
I see the incredulity in my son’s eyes and it makes me smile. Our children see us so imperfectly.
That was the sly, ruinous thing about motherhood, the thing that twisted your insides with guilt and made you change your mind and lower your standards: giving in was so damned easy. It.
Yesterday I was worried about a lot of things. Today I know what matters.
Now it would never happen; she would never get to know her father, never feel the warmth of his hand in hers, never fall asleep on the divan beside him, never be able to say all that needed to be said between them. Those words were lost, turned into ghosts that would drift away, unsaid. They would never be the family maman had promised. “Papa,” she said; it was such a big word suddenly, a dream in its entirety.
It is amazing how quickly a bone can heal. If only the heart were as durable.
I do,” she said quietly, stung by the sudden thought that without him, no one would know her that well.
I know I won’t be able to stand on the edge of intimacy. Sooner or later, I will have to dive into those cold, deep waters, and there is no end to the ripples my entrance will make. I.