A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it.
Memories didn’t live on streets or in cities. They flowed in the blood, pulsed with your heartbeat.
She had gone to him then, taken him in her arms and held him until he could breathe again. To her, it had been second nature, caring for him when he was hurting. But now she saw what she had never dared to see before: this love of hers was one-sided. She was the one who took care; he was the one who took.
Vianne worried about her constantly, but there was nothing to be done about worry; it had to be borne.
In small towns, the social dynamic was like concrete; it set early and hard.
It is not so much about who my father was, this advice; it is what life is about. What death does to you. When I look down, of course she is not moving, her skin is cold, and I know she did not really speak to me. But she did. And so I do what I must. I stand up, feeling out my new role. I am a motherless daughter now, a sisterless woman. There is no one left of the family I was born into; there is only the family I have made.
My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family. We plant, we tend, we harvest. I make wine from grape cuttings I brought here from Sicily, and the wine I make reminds me of my father. It binds us, one to another, as it has for generations. Now it will bind you to us.
I don’t know how to believe in her, but I don’t know how to let go, either. She’s my mother. After all of it, all the times she’s held on to me and all the times she’s let me go, she’s still woven through me, a part of the fabric of my soul, and it means something, that she’s here.
I turn to Kate, see her glowing face and her beautiful green eyes. In them, I see my whole life. Everything I’ve ever been, and ever wanted to be. That’s what your best friend is: a mirror.
And the best way not to care was to surround yourself with noise and people.
I’m going to go in. Meredith will need some help. Don’t stay out here too long.” “Why not?” her mother said, staring at the copper column. “You’ll catch pneumonia.” “You think I could die from the cold? I am not a lucky woman.
There were journeys in life no one could take for you.
Five words to change a world, to dissolve the ground beneath a woman’s feet. It was a tidal wave, that sentence, whooshing in without warning, undermining foundations, leaving homes crumbled in the aftermath.
She was feeling too much right now, and that was dangerous. Being a good psychiatrist was like reading a novel at forty. You needed to keep the words at arm’s length or everything became a blur.
When I held my babies and looked into their murky eyes, I found my life’s work. My passion. My purpose. It may not be trendy, but I was born to be a mother, and I loved every single second of it.
How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother’s? “They take me prisoner instead,” Mom said, still staring out the window.
I can drop a dove in midflight. And I don’t even want to hurt them. You, I kinda want to shoot.
It was ridiculous and embarrassing and inevitable, for it didn’t matter that motherhood had kicked the hell out of her and ruined her confidence; it had also swamped her so with love that she was only half a person without her daughter.
Loreda closed her eyes and thought of all the things she wished she’s said to her mother. I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ve never seen anyone so brave. You gave me wings, Mom. Did you know that?
A Russian dacha, or summerhouse, in Western Washington State. Even the orchard’s name was absurd. Belye Nochi.