Only tough women lasted on Texas farmland.
When Elsa had lost her third child – a son who never drew breath – it was Rose who held Elsa and let her cry, and said, Some lives are not ours to hold on to; God makes His choices without us.
They’d sewn their lives together in the silent way of women unused to conversation.
Her father was dying. Nothing could change that. Words were like pennies, fallen into corners and down the cracks, not worth the effort of collecting.
That’s what love is, I think. It’s all of it. Tears, anger, joy, struggle. Mostly, it’s durable. It lasts.
A year ago, Elsa would have thought it insane that any woman would think to walk from Oklahoma or Texas or Alabama to California, especially pushing a baby carriage. Now she knew better. When your children were dying, you did anything to save them, even walk over mountains and across deserts.
Mama takes Vera in her arms, holding her so hard that neither can breathe. There is only silence between them; in that silence, memories pass back and forth like dye in water, moving and fluid, and when they pull back and look at each other, Vera understands. They will not speak of Olga again, not for a long time, not until the sharp pain rounds into something that can be handled.
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.
Sometimes when you open the door to your mother’s past, you find your own future.
Words were like pennies, fallen into corners and down the cracks, not worth the effort of collecting.
Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.
More and more, though, those memories felt manufactured, false. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother laughed about anything. All Mom did was work. Work, work, work. As if that would save them.
When Mom drew back, her eyes were bright and she was smiling. “You are of me, Loreda, in a way that can never be broken. Not by words or anger or actions or time. I love you. I will always love you.
For the first time in her career, the tragedy of it all was nearly unbearable. It wasn’t worse here than where she’d been before. That wasn’t it. The situation hadn’t changed. She had. She carried grief with her everywhere, and the burden of it made compartmentalization impossible.
Ah. Well. You must keep believing that he will wake up. I have seen many so-called miracles in my years here. Often, I think faith has its part to play.” “I’m afraid to get my hopes up,” she said quietly. He paused at the closed door of Johnny’s room and looked down at her. “I did not say that faith was easy; merely that it was necessary. And you are here, are you not, by his side? This takes its own kind of courage, yes?” He patted her shoulder and left her standing by the door.
They are obviously drowning in a sea of what they’ve lost. I know about those dark waters. Someone needs to throw them a life ring.
He should know better than to dream so big and to give voice to those dreams.
The last thing she wanted was to give someone the power to hurt her. Self-preservation was the one thing she’d learned from her mother.
Rose, who spoke for the first time about her own lost children, had showed Elsa that grief could be borne one day, one chore, at a time.
But she knew that sometimes you grabbed hold of whatever you could to stay afloat. And maybe all that black was a shield, a way to say to people: ’don’t talk to me, don’t approach me, don’t ask your ordinary, everyday questions when my world has exploded.