I had nothing to fear from my father. Except his disappointment. Which was no small thing.
Especially at a time when one’s life was new, roots helped.
Pain is pain. You have a right to feel it.
You don’t seem it.” “I am happy.” “But you’ve just given me all the reasons I don’t need to have.
Mothering is precarious. You try to do the right thing – you think you have – then wham.
What was it they said about the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of crap being the bucket?
Wildness in animals is a curious thing to us humans. Isn’t that why people watch Animal Planet? Escape. Maybe that’s why we watch. Animal behavior is elemental. It takes us back to a simpler time.
The people who get places in life are the ones who stay ahead of the game.
Except she wasn’t Vicki Bell anymore. She was Vicki Bell Beaudry, owner of the Red Fox with her husband, Rob, whose family was nearly as rooted in Bell Valley as the Bell family was, hence a questionable welcome there, too.
Did you hear about the lawyer hurt in a crash? An ambulance stopped suddenly.
Some women are born with an instinct for knowing how things work – and what to do when they break.
You have a fuchsia heart. And a fuchsia heart doesn’t die, it simply bides its time, taking a backseat to pragmatism, all while leaking helpless drops of color here and there. Hence, teal gables, turquoise earrings, and saffron scarves.
What made a friend a best friend? Did it have to be someone who knew your people, who shared your life outlook or your views on religion or politics? Could it just be someone who could talk and listen and commiserate?
But wasn’t a best friend also someone you could trust not to hurt you? I had hurt Vicki, yet here she was, opening her home and heart to me again. So maybe being a best friend entailed the ability to forgive.
She thought about this. She had analyzed it in depth. When you live alone, travel alone, exist solely on the outskirts of other people’s lives, you do have time to wonder why what you want most in life is out of reach. You also have the time to tell yourself that you don’t want it at all, though whether you can ever be completely convinced is something else.
Love was such a complex emotion, so overpowering and all-consuming. Love conquered all, the old saying went.
For in the giving she received. It was what their love was all about.
Is it harder to dream about what you don’t have, than to live in fear of losing what you do?
Quinnipeague in August was a lush green place where inchworms dangled from trees whose leaves were so full that the eaten parts were barely missed. Mornings meant ‘thick o’ fog’ that caught on rooftops and dripped, blurring weathered gray shingles while barely muting the deep pink of rosa rugosa or the hydrangea’s blue. Wood smoke filled the air on rainy days, pine sap on sunny ones, and wafting through it all was the briny smell of the sea.
I love crowds. They make me feel part of something big and important.
Sometimes we do all the wrong things for all the right reasons. We can be our own worst enemies. It takes a while to get over that.