Grandmother Love Quotes

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.

Flustered, she replied, "You're not my - my - grandmother, or something." "You'd talk about this with your grandmother? I can't possibly imagine discussing my dating life with mine. She's a lovely woman, I suppose. If you like them bald and racist.

The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you left behind want to stop living.

We want to be loved,’ ” quotes Britt-Marie. “ ‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’ 

It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.' 'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?' 'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.

When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.

I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .

To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth—deep down, I always did. I was just a girl.

I shall never have a bath again," I said. "Just dont have one too often," my grandmother said. "Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child." It was at times like these that I loved my grandmother more than ever.

It's strange how close love and fear live to each other.

I love tables. And dancing. Oh, and I love table dancing, although Grandmother always says, "Wait until we're finished eating.

I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?

To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost.

A fridge will keep your steaks fresh, but keeping a live cow in grandmother’s room will keep the meat fresher. Let this be a lesson in love.

No Hello. No Hi, Pierce. Nice right hook you have there. No It's lovely to see you. Sorry about your counselor being killed last night. Yes, I see your grandmother is a Fury even though I told you none was after you. I guess I was wrong about that. Just Let's go.

I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something.

Shall I tell you the secret of true love? her father once asked her. A friend of mine liked to tell me that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why? Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that remind her of her grandmother's porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one woman loves wild geraniums. That's Mama! Inej had cried. Yes. Mama loves wild geraniums because no other flower has quite the same color, and she claims that when she snaps the stem and puts a sprig behind her ear, the whole world smells like summer. Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favourite flower, your favourite song, your favourite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.

The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

When a man touches a woman's body, he is not just touching her body. It goes MUCH DEEPER than that for a woman. He is touching parts of her soul-parts as diverse as how she feels about being a grandmother some day, to what is her favorite ice cream, to how much she loves her pet, and to her opinion of how the current President is governing. The man wants a sexual encounter and love is far from his mind; she desires permanence, commitment, safety, and security.

I went to college. Got a master’s degree. Went to Quantico for training. Been chasing down bad guys.” She gave her grandmother a wry look. “You know, the usual girly stuff.

Whever I came into the room, she'd light up, so happy to see me. No one ever in the course of my entire life was ever as happy to see me as she was. Looking back, now, I realize that you only ever need one person who lights up that way when you enter a room. One person is all it takes to give a kid confidence.

I know there's no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care, I am me. My name is Valerie, I don't think I'll live much longer and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography ill ever write, and god, I'm writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985, I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tuttlebrook, and she use to tell me that god was in the rain. I passed my 11th lesson into girl's grammar; it was at school that I met my first girlfriend, her name was Sara. It was her wrists. They were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that is was an adolescent phase people outgrew. Sara did, I didn't. In 2002 I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn't have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn't look at me, he told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I had only told them the truth, was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I starred in my first film, "The Salt Flats". It was the most important role of my life, not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again. We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew Scarlet Carsons for me in our window box, and our place always smelled of roses. Those were there best years of my life. But America's war grew worse, and worse. And eventually came to London. After that there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone. I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like collateral and rendition became frightening. While things like Norse Fire and The Articles of Allegiance became powerful, I remember how different became dangerous. I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I've never cried so hard in my life. It wasn't long till they came for me.It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses, and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An Inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie

And I wanted to tell him that even though I'd never been in love, I knew what it was like to be in a feeling, to be not just surrounded by it but also permeated by it, the way my grandmother talked about God being everywhere.

Our faces will become works of art that our grandchildren will treasure.

So, if you have a grandma, thank the good Lord above, and give your grandmamma hugs and kisses, for grandmothers are to love.

Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened.

I’ve never cheated on a lover. I’m faithful, always. But the war comes before anyone’s feelings. Every time.” Wow. Battle before love. Without a doubt, he was the most unromantic male she’d ever met. Even more so than her great-grandfather, who had laughingly burned her great-grandmother to death after she’d given birth to Gwen’s grandmother.

Did she say anything before she died?" he asked. "Yes," the surgeon said. "She said, 'Forgive him'" "Forgive him?" my father asked. "I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her." Wow. My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love and tolerance. She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her. I think My Dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death. I think my mother would have helped him. I think I would have helped him, too. But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer. Even dead, she was a better person than us.

Blaire, This was my grandmother’s. My father’s mother. She came to visit me before she passed away. I have fond memories of her visits and when she passed on she left this ring to me. In her will I was told to give it to the woman who completes me. She said it was given to her by my grandfather who passed away when my dad was just a baby but that she’d never loved another the way she’d loved him. He was her heart. You are mine. This is your something old. I love you, Rush

I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.

Grandmotherhood initiated me into a world of play, where all things became fresh, alive, and honest again through my grandchildren's eyes. Mostly, it retaught me love.

I have learned that I will not change the world, Jesus will do that. I can however, change the world for one person. I can change the world for fourteen little girls and for four hundred schoolchildren and for a sick and dying grandmother and for a malnourished, neglected, abused five-year old. And if one persons sees the love of Christ in me, it is worth every minute. In fact, it is worth spending my life for.

Why did they have to sacrifice anything?” “It was a symbol,” Grandmother explains. “Of an innocent dying on behalf of someone else—the greatest act of love. A choice to die so someone else doesn’t have to.

Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her.

Emilio appeared with wine before Cal could say anything, and Min beamed at him, grateful for the rescue. "Emilio, my darling. I forgot to mention cake boxes. Two hundred cake boxes." "Already on it," Emilio said. "Nonna said you'd need them. She said to get four-inch-square boxes for three-inch-square cakes." "I'm getting the boxes," Min said, nodding. "Sure. Great. Fine. Your grandmother is an angel and you are my hero. And of course, a genius with food." "And you are my favorite customer." Emilio kissed her cheek and disappeared back into the kitchen. "I love him," she told Cal. "I noticed," Cal said. "Been seeing him behind my back, have you?" "Yes," Min said. "We've been having conversations about cake." "Whoa," Cal said. "For you, that's talking dirty.

A grandmother's love was its own sort of powerful magic

But in the meantime, you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary." "What is that, grandmother?" "To understand other people.

I am slowly, painfully discovering that my refuge is not found in my mother, my grandmother, of even the birds of Bear River. My refuge exists in my capacity to love. If I can learn to love death then I can begin to find refuge in change.

Such was the love of this grandson for his grandmother that two years after the death of his mother, when she herself fell gravely ill, he vowed to her that someday he would try to tell the world her life story. 'But why?' she asked humbly. 'I'm no one, just a girl from the coast' 'But you are everyone, Grandma,' the young Pramoedya told her. 'You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own.

Grief, my mother once told me, is love’s most honest expression. The last and hardest aspect of truly, truly caring for someone. She said it at her own mother’s funeral rites, tears in her eyes even as she tried to comfort a boy too young to understand why he was so sad, why his grandmother couldn’t be there anymore. She explained through choking sobs that without grief, love would be meaningless. Because it is impossible to truly love something that cannot be lost.

Because when you love someone very much, it's difficult to learn to share her with someone else.

It's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.

But a planet can also become dark because of “too strong a desire for security … the greatest evil there is.” Meg resists her father’s analysis. What’s wrong with wanting to be safe? Mr. Murry insists that “lust for security” forces false choices and a panicked search for safety and conformity. This reminded me that my grandmother would get very annoyed when anyone would talk about “the power of love.” Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.

A Grandmother thinks of her grandchildren day and night, even when they are not with her.She will always love them more than anyone would understand.

Here's what I have to say about being married: someday you will look at him, hating him with every fiber of your being, wishing that he would die the most violent death possible. It will pass." --Hannah Horvath's dying grandmother

who cares what word you use? Some aunts are completely irrelevant, and some aunts have been there since the day their niece was born. I had one grandmother I never saw and one who, when she died, I cried for three days. The word isn’t what matters. It’s the specific relationship. You love that kid more than anything on this planet.

My grandmother always told me that she loved my prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, because I prayed in English. Everyone knows that Jesus, who's white, speaks English. The Bible is in English. Yes, the Bible was not written in English, but the Bible came to South Africa in English so to us it's English. Which made my prayers the best prayers because English prayers get answered first. How do we know this? Look at white people. Clearly they're getting through to the right person. Add to that Matthew 19:14. "Suffer little children to come unto me," Jesus said, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." So if a child is praying in English? To White Jesus? That's a powerful combination right there.

I told my kids I just want three words on my tombstone, if I have one. I'll probably be cremated. One is "woman." I'm very comfortable in that role. I've loved being a woman, I've loved being a mother, I've loved being a grandmother. I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.

People don’t just happen. We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The “I” it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, “I am no longer yours.” My grandmother and I, without knowing it, were faithfully following a script that had already been written for us. A woman raises a boy into a man, loving him so intensely that her commitment finally repulses him.

Age isn't stealing from my grandmother; it's slowly unwinding her.

Annabel stared at the door, then turned to Sebastian, feeling quite dazed. "I think my grandmother may have just given me permission to ruin myself." "I'll do all the ruining tonight," he said with a grin. "If you don't mind.

When she smiles, the lines in her face become epic narratives that trace the stories of generations that no book can replace.

My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance.

Thousands of miles from all the people closest to me, this stranger became my mother, my father, and my family attending to me like a lost child in her village, with the ease and comfort a grandmother would show to her loved ones. All without us exchanging a single word.

Grandmothers are a gift not to be taken lightly. So many lose them, before they are old enough to know their magic. I am glad my bones were born with this knowledge. She taught me how to become a good ancestor. At least this - loving her presence, appreciating her wisdom - is something I know how to do well.

Demonstrate talent, said Grandmother often to me, and you will still be loved by a husband when beauty has faded.

My grandmother warned that too much reading would ruin my eyesight, but I couldn’t hear her over the chatter of characters.

I’ve been lucky to have been cared for and loved since childhood by a circle of women. Now it’s time for me to create a wider circle, so I can do for my daughters and other women in the household what Grandmother, Miss Zhao, Meiling, and even Poppy have done for

They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly. It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals. It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.

From her thighs, she gives you life And how you treat she who gives you life Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator. And from seed to dust There is ONE soul above all others -- That you must always show patience, respect, and trust And this woman is your mother. And when your soul departs your body And your deeds are weighed against the feather There is only one soul who can save yours And this woman is your mother. And when the heart of the universe Asks her hair and mind, Whether you were gentle and kind to her Her heart will be forced to remain silent And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity, Very much like the seaweed in the sea -- It will reveal all that it has heard and seen. This woman whose heart has seen yours, First before anybody else in the world, And whose womb had opened the door For your eyes to experience light and more -- Is your very own MOTHER. So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel, Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish How you treat her is the ultimate test. If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness. And always remember, That the queen in the Creator's kingdom, Who sits on the throne of all existence, Is exactly the same as in yours. And her name is, THE DIVINE MOTHER.

All my dreams of leaving, but beneath them I was afraid to go. I had clung to them, to Rass, yes, even to my grandmother, afraid that if I loosened my fingers an iota, I would find myself once more cold and clean in a forgotten basket.

She loved them so much that she felt a kind of hollowness on the inner surface of her arms whenever she looked at them- an ache of longing to pull them close and hold them tight against her.

My grandmother once told me, “Relationships are work, honey, and they aren’t 50/50. Some days when I get up I only feel like giving 10%, then your granddaddy has to give 90% that day. But there is always 100% love.

i tell my grandmother i think love is a hungry caterpillar i am no meal historically i have never been more than a midnight snack

It’s very difficult not to love someone who can hear you say something as horrible as that and still be on your side.

I reread my grandmother's letter and realized with a deep sense of contentment that I had not had to change at all in order to have every hope for happiness in life. I had not had to learn to sing for company or to behave like Cecily or to stop twirling. I could be myself and be loved deeply. I was, in fact, a lot like Meg, who had always been a racehorse, I just hadn't known it.

We would also have to say goodbye to the joy of watching this next generation soak up the massive quantities of love their grandmother would have given them, and seeing them learn that there was someone in the world who loved them as much as their parents did: a grandmother who was delighted by all their quirks and who thought they were the most amazing creatures on earth.

It's strange how quickly the significance of a certain smell can change, depending on what path it decides to take through the brain. It's strange how close love and fear live to each other.

My grandmother used to say that there's something truly intimate about sharing food with the people you love." [Stacey] "Intimate? Sharing food? People you love?" Amber raises an eyebrow. "Um, no offense, Stace, but it sounds like Gram was into food kink.

Could I tell them I was sorry their loved one was dead, when he’d tried to kill me? There was no rule of etiquette for this; even my grandmother would have been stymied.

Sometimes, when you walk by the home of the girl you love, you can see her standing by the window... She waves at you, and you wave back... But it's her grandmother...

My grandmother and my two aunts were an exhibition in resilience and resourcefulness and black womanhood. They rarely talked about the unfairness of the world with the words that I use now with my social justice friends, words like "intersectionality" and "equality", "oppression", and "discrimination". They didn't discuss those things because they were too busy living it, navigating it, surviving it.

i remember how my grandmother tried to explain our world to me she told me a story she said the ground and the sky love each other but they don't have arms so rain is how they hold one another.

To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long.

There were the endless birthday nights and New Year's Eves of just you in your bed and no one else. There was the welling up at weddings, the glittery eye-prick, when all the couples would get up to dance. Sometimes it felt like your heart was crazed with cracks like your grandmother's old saucers. Sometimes the sight of a Saturday afternoon couple laughing in a park would splinter it completely.

Everybody is bizarre and disgusting and interesting and fixated on fetishes they wouldn’t admit to their grandmother on pain of vaporization and worthy of love. You are bizarre and disgusting and interesting and fixated on fetishes you wouldn’t admit to your grandmother on pain of vaporization and worthy of love.

At its best, activism is a form of healing. It is about what we do and how we show up in the world. It is about learning and expressing regard, compassion and love.

God is a thing I know when I see, and I see It all over, in Megan, in the night sky and the morning sun, and especially in Grandmother.

I saw a pattern forming, like a series of skipping stones that sent ripples through the generations: all the granddaughters and grandmothers who loved each other, all the mothers left stranded in between.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

The children we bring into the world are small replicas of ourselves and our husbands; the pride and joy of grandfathers and grandmothers. We dream of being mothers, and for most of us that dreams are realised naturally. For this is the Miracle of Life.

Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again.

You’ll be seeing him tomorrow night, anyway.” “I am?” Hyacinth asked, at precisely the moment Mr. St. Clair said, “She will?” “You’re accompanying me to the Pleinsworth poetry reading,” Lady D told her grandson. “Or have you forgotten?” Hyacinth sat back, enjoying the sight of Gareth St. Clair’s mouth opening and closing in obvious distress. He looked a bit like a fish, she decided. A fish with the features of a Greek god, but still, a fish. “I really…” he said. “That is to say, I can’t—” “You can, and you will be there,” Lady D said. “You promised.” He regarded her with a stern expression. “I cannot imagine—” “Well, if you didn’t promise, you should have done, and if you love me…” Hyacinth coughed to cover her laugh, then tried not to smirk when Mr. St. Clair shot a dirty look in her direction. “When I die,” he said, “surely my epitaph will read, ‘He loved his grandmother when no one else would.’” “And what’s wrong with that?” Lady Danbury asked.

A life with love is happy. A life for love is foolish. A life of if only is unbearable. In my seventy-eight years, I have had all three. Grandmother would often say, “So it is with sorrow. So it is with happiness. It will pass.” But even in my old age, when I close my eyes, I can still see the distant flicker of a thousand tiny lights.

A friend of mine liked to tell me that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why? Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that remind her of her grandmother's porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one woman loves wild geraniums.

Gran, for the gods' love, it's talk like yours that starts riots!" I said keeping my voice down. "Will you just put a stopper in it?" She looked at me and sighed. "Girl, do you ever take a breath and wonder if folk don't put out bait for you? To see if you'll bite? You'll never get a man if you don't relax." My dear old Gran. It's a wonder her children aren't every one of them as mad as priests, if she mangles their wits as she mangles mine. "Granny, "I told her, "this is dead serious. I can't relax, no more than any Dog. I'm not shopping for a man. That's the last thing I need.

The refusal to love is the only unbearable thing.

If you have a son, how will you love him? She is pacing the living room, while the Thanksgiving Day Parade plays behind her, a montage of inflated cartoon bodies, floating slow down 6th Avenue, smiles painted onto their faces. I consider not responding. I consider explaining that I can love him and not trust him. I consider saying that I won’t love him at all. Just to scare her. Instead, I say, If I am ever murdered, like, body found in a ditch, mouth stuffed with dirt, stocking around my neck, identified by my toenails, please don’t go looking for a guilty woman. ("My Grandmother Asks Why I Don't Trust Men")

Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?' Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.

What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.

And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely's mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely's cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy's talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan's possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie's soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all these good and these bad things. She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Kitie's secret, desparing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only- the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life- the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

Darling Daddy, This is Rose. So flames went all up the kitchen wall. Saffron called the fire brigade and the police came too to see if it was a trick and the police woman said to Saffron Here You Are Again because of when I got lost having my glasses checked. But I was with Tom whose grandmother is a witch on top of the highest place in town. Love, Rose.

[in reference to turkey bowling] He [Tommy] squinted and picked his target, then took his steps and sent the bird sliding down the aisle. A collective gasp rose from the crew as the fourteen-pound, self-basting, fresh-frozen projectile of wholesome savory goodness plowed into the soap bottles like a freight train into a chorus line of drunken grandmothers.

I want to love like my grandmother, who loved a woman like Joseph loved Mary. Someone so imperfect, so human, brave enough to love someone who already knows God.

I loved Granny Belmonte, but she didn't need a costume to look undead.

When my grandmother died, time died, too, in this apartment.

But Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her.

Well, the thing is, I don't think Indians are nomadic anymore. Most indians anyway.' No, we're not,' I said I'm not nomadic,' Rowdy said. 'Hardly anybody on this rez is nomadic. Except for you. You're the nomadic one.' Whatever.' No. I'm serious. I always knew you were going to leave. I always knew you were going to leave us behind and travel the world. I had this dream about you a few months ago. You were standing on the Great Wall of China. You looked happy. And I was happy for you.' Rowdy didn't cry. But I did. You're an old-time nomad,' Rowdy said. 'You're going to keep moving all over the world in search of food and water and grazing land. That's pretty cool.' I could barely talk. Thank you,' I said. Yeah,' Rowdy said. 'Just make sure you send me postcards, you asshole.' From everywhere,' I said. I would always love Rowdy. And I would always miss him, too. Just as I would always love and miss my grandmother, my big sister, and Eugene. Just as I would always love and miss my reservation and my tribe. I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see; or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength—in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

Kids are hard -they drive you crazy and break your heart- whereas grandchildren make you feel great about life, and yourself, and your ability to love someone unconditionally, finally, after all these years.

Living is like driving," my grandmother used to say. "You have to pick a lane." Have I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future.

In some circles, admitting you love Top 40 radio is tantamount to bragging you gave your grandmother the clap, in church, in the front row at your aunt's funeral, but those are the circles I avoid like the plague or, for that matter, the clap.

I could have had one life but insteads I had another because of this book my grandmother protected. What a miracle is that? I was taught to love beautiful things. I had a language in which to consider beauty. Later that extended to the opera, to the ballet, to architecture I saw, and even later still I came to realize that what I had seen in the paintings I could see in the fields or a river. I could see it in people. All of that I attribute to this book.

All of us who fight here today do so with someone standing invisible behind us.” Asterin’s gold-flecked black eyes softened a bit. “Yes,” was all Manon’s Second said as her hand drifted to her abdomen. Not in memory of the hateful word branded there, of what had been done to her. In memory of the stillborn witchling who had been thrown by Manon’s grandmother into the fire before Asterin had a chance to hold her. In memory of the hunter whom Asterin had loved, as no Ironteeth ever had loved a man, and had never gone back to, for shame and fear. The hunter who had never stopped waiting for her to return, even when he was an old man. For them, for the family she had lost, Manon knew her Second would fight today. So it might never happen again.

My grandmother stepped back into the kitchen to get their drinks. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was a part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book. ~Susie's grandmother, Lynn pgs 315-316

Their great-great-grandmother once claimed that when the de Vincent men fell in love, they did so fast and hard, without reason or hesitation

Miplorisians believe that the inner voices are those of the dead coming back to help their loved ones.

The people we’d want to share it all with die before we get it.

Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels Unless you count your grandmother’s cake, hand mixed while she waits for the sound of your breath at the door. Or if you consider the taste of the sea, arms raised while you enter, salt at your lips. Or maybe you’ve forgotten the taste of a lover, your mouth on his skin. I ask—have you ever tasted the cool swill of freedom? The consuming rush of a quiet, radical love.

Lena studied the faces of the girls on the sidelines. She could tell that Kostos owned the lust of what few local teenage girls there were in Oia, but instead he chose to dance with all the grandmothers, all the women who had raised him, who had poured into him the love they couldn't spend on their own absent children and grandchildren.

Courage and strength moves like the steadfast waves of the ocean. Ebbs and flows, highs and lows, loud and soft, firm and vulnerable, passing encouragement from one generation to the next.

Where'd you send her?" "Siberia. Lovely this time of year. A bit remote, I'm afraid. Might take her weeks to find a town and even longer to arrange transportation back to the States." My lips quirked. I didn't feel like laughing, but the image of my half-millenium-old grandmother trudging through snow was kind of funny. "You're sick, you know that?" "What can I day? I thought a cold-hearted bitch like her would feel at home in the tundra.

In the beginning the queen had been a courageous and fair-minded princess very much liked by all, but unfortunately she grew up and became a frightened adult, as adults tend to be. She started loving efficiency and avoiding conflict. As adults do.

In Miamas, fairy tales are still produced around the clock, lovingly handmade one by one, and only the very, very finest of them are exported. Most are only told once and then they fall flat on the ground, but the best and most beautiful of them rise from the lips of their tellers after the last words have been spoken, and then slowly hover off over the heads of the listeners, like small, shimmering paper lanterns.

She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what? What? Pat did not understand.

One realizes that even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another – secret and passionate and intense – which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him. One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day . . .

My heart races and I look away. “Well I care. So, write it down. For nine weekends and eight thousand dollars, what's yours is mine including your friends.” I throw in a little sarcastic eye flutter. “We're going to be so head-over-heels-in-love. I can't wait to see how romantic you are!” “Oh no. I refuse to be your kind of bumper-sticker-romantic. Don't mistake me for Mr. Darcy.” I gasp. “You don't know Hunger Games or Forks, Washington, but you know Mr. Darcy? Start talking.” “Crap! My grandmother's a fan. She's tortured me since birth with Mr. Darcy. Thanks to her DVD collection, I can quote Jane Austen faster than the Elmo song.” I laugh, surprised again. “Prove it.” “Elizabeth, daaarling!” He's launched into a breathless English accent. “I love, love, love you, and I never want to be parted from you from this day forward. Pardon me, whilst I puke…” “No way!” I beam. “Let the contract state that I want the Mr. Darcy accent once a week!” I can't help but laugh again because he's shaking his head and laughing back.

The answer to why so many of us have difficulties is because our ancestors spent centuries here under unrelentingly brutal conditions. Generation after generation, our bodies stored trauma and intense survival energy, and passed these on to our children and grandchildren. Most of us also passed down resilience and love, of course. But, as we saw with my grandmother—and as we see with so many other human beings—resilience and love aren’t sufficient to completely heal all trauma. Often, at least some of the trauma continues

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head. “We’ve got a treat today, you know,” said the nurse, “watercress sandwiches for tea. We love watercress, don’t we?

Her crown of white hair seemed to stand like a halo around her in the night sky.

[My grandmother] was so humble of heart and so gentle that her tenderness for others and her disregard for herself and her own troubles blended in a smile which, unlike those seen on the majority of human faces, bore no trace of irony save for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which could not look upon those she loved without seeming to bestow upon them passionate caresses.

Help the ones you love, his grandmother had told him, help them when you can, and after that, mind your business. Your gift doesn’t give you the right to go rearranging other people’s lives for them. You might see their souls, but they won’t always want you to be their mirror.

Maybe you've been in love. I man real love, the kind my grandmother used to describe by quoting the apostle Paul's First letter to the Corinthians, the love that is kind and patient, that does not envy or boast, that beareth all things and believeth all things and endureth all things. I don't like to throw the L-word around; it's too good and rare a feeling to cheapen with overuse. You can live a good life without ever knowing real love, of the Corinthians variety,..

black women breathe flowers, too. just because we are taught to grow them in the lining of our quiet (our grandmothers secret) does nor mean we do not swelter with wild tenderness. we soft swim. we petal. we scent limbs. love. we just have been too long a garden for sharp and deadly teeth. so we have grown ourselfves into greenhouses.

Oh Cecelia, you would have loved my grandmother, Miz Goodpepper said, dunking a cookie into her wine. She was so alive and full of original ideas, especially for that era. While other women were busy being proper, she was busy cultivating her spirit.

My grandmother's life had been one long opera. There had been drama, heroes, villains, improbable twists, all that. But most of all there had been love, great big waves of it, crashing ceaselessly against the rocks of life, bearing us all back to grace.

He thought what happened to me would … destroy, would disillusion me about the Bureau, and he enjoys seeing the destruction of faith, it’s his favorite thing. It’s like the church collapses he used to collect. The pile of rubble in Italy when the church collapsed on all the grandmothers at that special Mass and somebody stuck a Christmas tree in the top of the pile, he loved that.

You may have heard the old story, usually attributed to a Native American elder, meant to illuminate the power of attention. A grandfather (occasionally it’s a grandmother) imparting a life lesson to his grandson tells him, "I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene." The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, "The one I feed.

He still heard his mother's voice--"Davey"--rise like whisper-dust from unseen corners in the house, but it was no longer the only voice he heard. His ears were also filled with the voices of others--his father and Primrose and Refrigerator John and his grandmother. Of course, all of their words for a thousand years could not fill the hole left by his mother, but they could raise a loving fence around it so he didn't keep falling in.

Every time you share a meal with someone, you bring your history, your country, your region, your religion, your tribe, your grandmother with you. You sit with your past, your opinions, your love, your curiosity, your resentments, your hospitality. Food is where we all intersect. Everywhere you go, anywhere you go.

His blue eyes brightened with a smile. 'I did.' He looked over his shoulder, as if making sure her mom wasn't looking. The he pulled her against him and kissed her. A soft kiss. 'I got you something,' He whispered, his lips breathing words against hers. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring. A gold ring with a large diamond. A beautiful, teardrop-shaped diamond that looked like an engagement ring. Kylie's breath caught. 'It was my grandmother's ring. In her letter she wrote you should have it. And before you start panicking, let me say that I know maybe we're too young to call it an engagement, That's why I got you this too.' He pulled out a gold chain 'I want you to wear it around your neck. Call it a promise- A promise that when you do slip a ring on that finger...' He ran his hand down to her left hand. 'That it'll be my ring.' Emotion rose in her chest 'You don't have to give me anything for me to give you that promise.

It was the kind of "here" your mother or your big sister or your great-aunt or your grandmother would have said. It was the kind of "here" that let you know this was hard-earned money but, also, that you needed it more than she did, and the kind of "here" that said she wished you had it and didn't have to borrow it from her, but since you did not have it, and she did, then "here" it was, with a kind of love. It was the kind of "here" that asked the question, When will all this end? When will a man not have to struggle to have money to get what he needs "here"? When will a man be able to live without having to kill another man "here"?

Choose to live, Elisabeth. There's a fire within you; keep it alight. Feed that flame with music and seasons and chocolate torte and strawberries and your Grandmother's Gugelhopf. Let it grow with your love for your family. Let it be a beacon to set your heart by, so that you remain true to yourself." He stroked my cheek. "Do this, so that I remember you like this: fierce and full of life.

I had hoped to make her strong and healthy, and now she may be too weak herself after this slow death, like my father's slow long death, to come to me. and I am here, futile, cut off from the ritual of family love and neighborhood and from giving strength and love to my dear brave grandmother's dying whom I loved above thought. and my mother will go, and there is the terror of having no parents, no older seasoned beings, to advise and love me in this world.

I thought about him asking me if I'd ever been in love. It's a weird phrase in English, in love, like it's a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don't get to be in anything else—in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be is in love. And I wanted to tell him that even though I'd never been in love, I knew what it was like to be in a feeling, to be not just surrounded by it but also be permeated by it, the way my grandmother talked about God being everywhere. When my thoughts spiraled, I was in the spiral, and of it. And I wanted to tell him that the idea of being in a feeling gave language to something i couldn't describe before, created a form for it, but I couldn't figure out how to say any of that out loud.

According to my grandmother’s people, two wolves live inside every creature: one evil and the other good. They spend all their time trying to destroy each other.” It was, Matthew thought, as good a description of blood rage as he was ever likely to hear from someone not afflicted with the disease. “My bad wolf is winning.” Jack looked sad. “He doesn’t have to,” Chris promised. “Nana Bets said the wolf who wins is the wolf you feed. The evil wolf feeds on anger, guilt, sorrow, lies, and regret. The good wolf needs a diet of love and honesty, spiced up with big spoonfuls of compassion and faith. So if you want the good wolf to win, you’re going to have to starve the other one.

We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God. Her culinary prowess was one of our family’s primal stories, like the cunning of the grandfather I never met, or the single fight of my parents’ marriage. We clung to those stories and depended on them to define us. We were the family that chose its battles wisely, and used wit to get out of binds, and loved the food of our matriarch.

Panic always comes to me in the same way. First, I get a knot in the pit of my stomach that turns to nausea, then a fluttery breathlessness that no amount of deep breathing can cure. But what causes my fear is different every day, I never know what will set me off. It could be a kiss from my husband, or the lingering look of sadness in his eyes when he draws back. Sometimes I know he's already grieving for me, missing me even while I'm still here. Worse yet is Marah's quiet acceptance of everything I say. I would give anything for another of our old knock-down drag-out fights. That's one of the first things I'd say to you now, Marah: Those fights were real life. You were struggling to break free of being my daughter but unsure of how to be yourself, while I was afraid to let you go. It's the circle of love. I only wish I'd recognized it then. Your grandmother told me I'd know you were sorry for those years before you did, and she was right. I know you regret some of the things you said to me, as I regret my own words. None of that matters, though. I want you to know that. I love you and I know you love me.

[Grandfather] would manufacture funnies with Grandmother before she died about how he was in love with other women who were not her. She knew it was only funnies because she would laugh in volumes. 'Anna,' he would say, 'I am going to marry that one with the pink hat.' And she would say, 'To whom are you going to marry her?' And he would say, 'To me.' I would laugh very much in the back seat, and she would say to him, 'But you are no priest.' And he would say, 'I am today.' And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.

Hello," Lilly said."Movie. Of your life.You were portrayed as shy and awkward." "I am shy and awkward," I reminded her. "They made your grandmother all kindly and sympathetic to your plight," Lilly said."It was the grossest mischaracterization I've seen since Shakespeare in Love tried to pass off the Bard as a hottie with a six-pack and a full set of teeth.

That time, in third grade, with the help of Mrs. Callahan, my ESL teacher, I read the first book that I loved, a children's book called Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco. In the story, when a girl and her grandmother spot a storm brewing on the green horizon, instead of shuttering the windows or nailing boards on the doors, they set out to bake a cake. I was unmoored by this act, its precarious yet bold refusal of common sense. As Mrs. Calahan stood behind me, her mouth at my ear, I was pulled deeper into the current of language. The story unfurled, its storm rolled in as she spoke, then rolled in once more as I repeated the words. To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

How long does a mouse live?" "Ah," she said. "I've been waiting for you to ask me that." There was a silence. She sat there smoking away and gazing at the fire. "Well," I said. "How long do we live, us mice?" "I have been reading about mice," she said. "I have been trying to find out everything I can about them." "Go on then, Grandmamma. Why don't you tell me?" "If you really want to know," she said, "I'm afraid a mouse doesn't live for a very long time." "How long?" I asked. "Well, an ordinary mouse only lives for about three years," she said. "But you are not an ordinary mouse. You are a mouse-person, and that is a very different matter." "How different?" I asked. "How long does a mouse-person live, Grandmamma?" "Longer," she said. "Much longer." "A mouse-person will almost certainly live for three times as long as an ordinary mouse," my grandmother said. "About nine years." "Good!" I cried. "That's great! It's the best news I've ever had!" "Why do you say that?" she asked, surprised. "Because I would never want to live longer than you," I said. "I couldn't stand being looked after by anybody else." There was a short silence. She had a way of fondling me behind the ears with the tip of one finger. It felt lovely. "How old are you, Grandmamma?" I asked. "I'm eighty-six," she said. "Will you live another eight or nine years?" "I might," she said. "With a bit of luck." "You've got to," I said. "Because by then I'll be a very old mouse and you'll be a very old grandmother and soon after that we'll both die together." "That would be perfect," she said.

Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?" "He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,'" I explained. Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!" And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was--a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die.

...my grandmother [Madeleine L'Engle] would get very annoyed when anyone would talk about 'the power of love.' Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk-- not safety and security-- that we overcome darkness.

The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. She was straightforward, loyal, and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly proved by her laughing at his jokes); and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

It was my mother who tucked him in and told him that there exists a sort of love in the world that only survives as long as no one ever speaks of it, and that was why he would never have to worry because my grandmother was never going to be the kind of mother who held her children in her arms and told them how smart and beautiful and talented they were. She was only going to scold them, make them feel diminutive, make them feel like they were never good enough, make them know this world wouldn't be kind to them. She wasn't going to let someone else be better than her at making her children feel pain or scare them more than she could, and that to her, that was a form of protection. That's how we will be with our own children, my mother was proud to realize. Because we'll learn from our mother who learned from her mother before her and all the mothers before them.

There are all sorts of families," Tom's grandmother had remarked, and over the following few weeks Tom became part of the Casson family, as Micheal and Sarah and Derek-from-the-camp had done before him. He immediately discovered that being a member of the family was very different from being a welcome friend. If you were a Casson family member, for example, and Eve drifted in from the shed asking, "Food? Any ideas? Or shall we not bother?" then you either joined in the search of the kitchen cupboards or counted the money in the housekeeping jam jar and calculated how many pizzas you could afford. Also, if you were a family member you took care of Rose, helped with homework (Saffron and Sarah were very strict about homework), unloaded the washing machine, learned to fold up Sarah's wheelchair, hunted for car keys, and kept up the hopeful theory that in the event of a crisis Bill Casson would disengage himself from his artistic life in London and rush home to help.

The arm of flesh will fail you," Bridie's grandmother had been fond of reminding her, especially after she'd started dating, bringing home this one and that one, going on and on about them. "Love with all your heart, . . . but don't look to anybody but the Lord to fill up your empty spots. There's never been a man born . . . who can do that, and I don't care if he's the finest thing since store-bought pickles.

But I've always been a sucker for externals alone: the shape, the shine, what the surface suggests to my palm. So mechanically disinclined it's verging on criminal, I never understood the beauty of an object's workings until Linny sat my reluctant self down one day and showed me her camera. Within fifteen minutes, I had fallen hard for the whole gadgety, eyelike nature of the thing: a tiny piece of glass slowing, bending, organizing light - light - into your grandmother, the Grand Canyon, the begonia on the windowsill, the film keeping the image like a secret. Grandmother, canyon, begonia tucked neatly into the sleek black box, like bugs in a jar. My mind boggled.

Looking back now, to Rahel it seemed as though this difficulty that their family had with classification ran much deeper than the jam-jelly question. Perhaps, Ammu, Estha and she were the worst transgressors. But it wasn't just them. It was the others too. They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly. It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals. It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.

Then I catch myself and listlessly wonder again for which of my sins I am being punished. I am sick to death of this wound that will not close; of how my babyish heart mistakes any simple kindness from a woman for a breadcrumb trail leading to the soft love of a mother or the fond approval of a grandmother. I am tired of carrying this dull orphan-pain, for though it has lost its power to surprise, every season it still reaps its harvest of hurt.

Be that as it may,” the Queen says dryly, “we must set a good example for the young ladies of Wessco.” She pats Sarah’s hand. “Explain it to him, dear.” My grandmother and Sarah have grown very close in the last year. Granny’s taken Sarah safely under her wing and become a wonderful, strong mentor to my lovely girl. Not unlike Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.

Her grandmother spoke so softly that even Manon could barely hear over her own gasps for air. “As your mother labored to push you out, she confessed who your father was. She said you … you would be the one who broke the curse, who saved us. She said your father was a rare-born Crochan Prince. And she said that your mixed blood would be the key.” Her grandmother lifted her nails to her mouth and licked off Manon’s blue blood. No. No. “So you have been a Kin Slayer your whole life,” her grandmother purred. “Hunting down those Crochans—your relatives. When you were a witchling, your father searched the lands for you. He never stopped loving your mother. Loving her,” she spat. “And loving you. So I killed him.” Manon gazed at the drop below, the death that beckoned. “His despair was delicious when I told him what I’d done to her. What I would make you into. Not a child of peace—but war.” Made. Made. Made.

She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with the chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It was too big for me and would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler to make it that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. If I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice. With love, Your grandmother

Imagine this: Instead of waiting in her tower, Rapunzel slices off her long, golden hair with a carving knife, and then uses it to climb down to freedom. Just as she’s about to take the poison apple, Snow White sees the familiar wicked glow in the old lady’s eyes, and slashes the evil queen’s throat with a pair of sewing scissors. Cinderella refuses everything but the glass slippers from her fairy godmother, crushes her stepmother’s windpipe under her heel, and the Prince falls madly in love with the mysterious girl who dons rags and blood-stained slippers. Imagine this: Persephone goes adventuring with weapons hidden under her dress. Persephone climbs into the gaping chasm. Or, Persephone uses her hands to carve a hole down to hell. In none of these versions is Persephone’s body violated unless she asks Hades to hold her down with his horse-whips. Not once does she hold out on eating the pomegranate, instead biting into it eagerly and relishing the juice running down her chin, staining it red. In some of the stories, Hades never appears and Persephone rules the underworld with a crown of her own making. In all of them, it is widely known that the name Persephone means Bringer of Destruction. Imagine this: Red Riding Hood marches from her grandmother’s house with a bloody wolf pelt. Medusa rights the wrongs that have been done to her. Eurydice breaks every muscle in her arms climbing out of the land of the dead. Imagine this: Girls are allowed to think dark thoughts, and be dark things. Imagine this: Instead of the dragon, it’s the princess with claws and fiery breath who smashes her way from the confines of her castle and swallows men whole.

I point at Drew, as I turn to Dawn. "See? My sister finds her soulmate, and not only does she get rewarded with love and happiness, she gets free champagne flutes, and dutch ovens, and fifty-dollar checks. And what do I get? What do I get on a day when I still haven't found anyone to love? When I'm waiting by the phone for some jerk to call me, and acting like a crazy woman, e-mailing him at three a.m., clutching at straws that I might ever find anyone? Do I get gifts? No! I get condemnation from my grandmother, and I get to wear a dress that makes me look like a baked potato.

Ma-ma-oo didn't gun the motor so we puttered along. The day promised to be a scorcher, but out on the ocean with the spray cooling on my face and the wind drying it away, the heat was bearable. I wished summer would never end. I wished I could do this all year and never have to go back to school. I wished I could pick berries and go fishing with Ma-ma-oo and spend all my days wandering.

Grandmam, as I have seen in looking back, was the decider of my fate. She shaped my life, without of course knowing what my life would be. She taught me many things that I was going to need to know, without either us knowing I would need to know them. She made the connections that made my life.... If it hadn't been for her, what would my life have been? I don't know. I know it surely would have been different. And it is only by looking back, as an old woman myself, like her a widow and a grandmother, that I can see how much she loved me and can pay her out of my heart the love I owe her.

I do not consider myself a religious person, because I don't adhere to a particular religion or faith or prescribed beliefs, as did my father, who was a Baptist minister. And I am not an atheist, one who thinks that belief in anything beyond the here and now and the rational is delusion. I love science, but I allow for mystery, things that can never be proven by a rational mind. I am a person who thinks about the nature of the spirit when I write. I think about what can't be known and only imagined. I often sense a spirit or force or meaning beyond myself. I leave it open as to what the spirit is, but I continue to make guesses -- that it could be the universal binding of the emotion of love, or a joyful quality of humanity, or a collective unconscious that turns out to be a unified conscience. The spirit could be all those worshiped by all the religions, even those that deny the validity of others. It could be that we all exist in all ten dimensions of a string-theory universe and are seeding memories in all of them and occupy them simultaneously as memory. Or we exist only as thought and out perception that it is a physical world is a delusion. The nature of spirit could also be my mother and my grandmother and that they really do serve as my muses as I fondly imagine them doing at times. Or maybe the nature of the spirit is a freer imagination. I've often thought that imagination was the conduit to compassion, and compassion is a true spiritual nature. Whatever the spirit might be, I am not basing what I do in this life on any expected reward or punishment in the hereafter or thereafter. It is enough that I feel blessed -- and by whom or what I don't know -- but I receive it with gratitude that I am a writer and my work is to imagine all the possibilities.

That part of the press release about me asking your father’s permission to marry you was true—well, partly true, anyway. I didn’t ask permission—I knew you wouldn’t like that, it’s sexist. You’re not your father’s property. But I did see him before we left, to tell him I was going to propose to you this weekend, and ask for his blessing.” I was stunned. “Wait . . . is this what you meant when you said before we left that you’d talked to my parents?” “Yes. I spoke to your mother, too, because she played an even bigger role in raising you. I thought it was the right thing to do. How do you think you got out of doing all those events—and birthday Cirque du Soleil with your grandmother—so easily?

She said, "Well, that's right, she's going to heaven very soon. And now it's time for us to say good-bye to her and tell her how much we love her." Mary martha nodded and looked at the needlepoint in her hands. "Will her brain still be hurt, in heaven?" she asked. [Rebecca]....said, "Do you remember that time at the beach, when you went into the water with Gran-Gran and the waves were too big and she lifted you up over them? And you two were laughing so much and you said she was the coolest grandmother in the world?" Mary Martha smiled. "Yes" "That is how she will be in heaven," Rebecca said.

One day in the future, I will show my child her great-grandmother’s jade, the little gold rabbit with the ruby eyes. I will tell her that this will be hers. I will tell her all the stories about how our family survived, about the wars, and the gambling dens, and, yes, eventually even the golf club. I will tell her that when the sky falls, she should use it as a blanket. And then I will give her the shining thing, the thing that none of us got, the thing that only I, in all of my resilient power, can give. The thing that all this pain has given me. I will hold her tight and tell her that I love her more than anything in the world. That she can always come to me for anything at all, and I will fix it if it needs fixing or just listen if she needs to be listened to. And as long as I live, I will never leave.

Maybe you've been in love. I mean real love, the kind my grandmother used to describe by quoting the apostle Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, the love that is kind and patient, that does not envy or boast, that beareth all things and believeth all things and endureth all things. I don't like to throw the L-word around; it's too good and rare a feeling to cheapen with overuse. You can live a good life without ever knowing real love, of the Corinthians variety, but I was fortunate to have found it with Harold.

There have been times," Father Mark admitted, "when I feared that God would turn out to be like my maternal grandmother [...] Ours was a large family, and every Christmas my grandmother gave gifts of cash in varying amounts, claiming she was rewarding her grandchildren according to how much they loved her. She swore she could look right into our hearts and know. One child would get a crisp fifty-dollar bill, the next a crumpled single. No two gifts were ever in the same amount." Miles nodded. "Well, maybe there's a hell.

I am a wife, mother, and friend, and soon to be grandmother, I still feel, understand, and am worthy of the love and joy in those relationships. I am still an active participant in society. My brain no longer works well, but I use my ears for unconditional listening, my shoulders for crying on, and my arms for hugging others with dementia. Through an early stage support group...by talking to you today, I am helping others with dementia live better with dementia. I am not someone dying. I am someone living with Alzheimer's. I want to do that as well as I possibly can.

I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next. I think of your grandmother calling me and noting how you were growing tall and would one day try to “test me.” And I said to her that I would regard that day, should it come, as the total failure of fatherhood because if all I had over you were my hands, then I really had nothing at all. But, forgive me, son, I knew what she meant and when you were younger I thought the same. And I am now ashamed of the thought, ashamed of my fear, of the generational chains I tried to clasp onto your wrists. We are entering our last years together, and I wish I had been softer with you. Your mother had to teach me how to love you—how to kiss you and tell you I love you every night. Even now it does not feel a wholly natural act so much as it feels like ritual. And that is because I am wounded. That is because I am tied to old ways, which I learned in a hard house. It was a loving house even as it was besieged by its country, but it was hard. Even in Paris, I could not shake the old ways, the instinct to watch my back at every pass, and always be ready to go.

By this time she had reached the Blenheim estate on the outskirts of River Heights. The broad tree-shadowed lawn was filled with women setting up displays for the annual charity flower show. Nancy had been assigned a spot in the greenhouse behind the mansion. As she set her larkspur arrangement in place, the chairman came up to her. “My, Nancy, your delphinium are gorgeous,” Mrs. Winsor said. “Thank you,” Nancy replied. “I just adore larkspur,” the woman said. “Such a lovely old-fashioned flower. My grandmother had them in her garden. She always had hollyhocks and bluebells, too.

Rather, a woman is regarded as owing her human capacities to particular people, often men or his children within heterosexual relationships that also uphold white supremacy, and who are in turn deemed entitled to her services. This might be envisaged as the de facto legacy of coverture law—a woman’s being “spoken for” by her father, and afterward her husband, then son-in-law, and so on. And it is plausibly part of what makes women more broadly somebody’s mother, sister, daughter, grandmother: always somebody’s someone, and seldom her own person. But this is not because she’s not held to be a person at all, but rather because her personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty.

I’ve started dreaming in Spanish, which has never happened before. I wake up feeling different, like something inside me is changing, something chemical and irreversible. There’s a magic here working its way through my veins. There’s something about the vegetation, too, that I respond to instinctively - the stunning bougainvillea, the flamboyants and jacarandas, the orchids growing from the trunks of the mysterious ceiba trees. And I love Havana, its noise and decay and painted ladyness. I could happily sit on one of those wrought-iron balconies for days, or keep my grandmother company on her porch, with its ringside view of the sea. I’m afraid to lose all this, to lose Abuela Celia again. But sooner or later I’d have to return to New York. I know now it’s where I belong - not instead of here, but more than here. How can I tell my grandmother this?

Cinder." Kai pulled one leg onto the bank, turning his body so they were facing each other. He took her hands between his and her heart began to drum unexpectedly. Not because of his touch, and not even because of his low, serious tone, but because it occurred to Cinder all at once that Kai was nervous. Kai was never nervous. "I asked you once," he said, running his thumbs over her knuckles, "if you thought you would ever be willing to wear a crown again. Not as the queen of Luna, but ... as my empress. And you said that you would consider it, someday." She swallowed a breath of cool night air. "And ... this is that day?" His lips twitched, but didn't quite become a smile. "I love you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to marry you, and, yes, I want you to be my empress." Cinder gaped at him for a long moment before she whispered, "That's a lot of wanting." "You have no idea." She lowered her lashes. "I might have some idea." Kai released one of her hands and she looked up again to see him reaching into his pocket - the same that had held Wolf's and Scarlet's wedding rings before. His fist was closed when he pulled it out and Kai held it toward her, released a slow breath, and opened his fingers to reveal a stunning ring with a large ruby ringed in diamonds. It didn't take long for her retina scanner to measure the ring, and within seconds it was filling her in on far more information than she needed - inane worlds like carats and clarity scrolled past her vision. But it was the ring's history that snagged her attention. It had been his mother's engagement ring once, and his grandmother's before that. Kai took her hand and slipped the ring onto her finger. Metal clinked against metal, and the priceless gem looked as ridiculous against her cyborg plating as the simple gold band had looked on Wolf's enormous, deformed, slightly hairy hand. Cinder pressed her lips together and swallowed, hard, before daring to meet Kai's gaze again. "Cinder," he said, "will you marry me?" Absurd, she thought. The emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth was proposing to her. It was uncanny. It was hysterical. But it was Kai, and somehow, that also made it exactly right. "Yes," she whispered. "I will marry you." Those simple words hung between them for a breath, and then she grinned and kissed him, amazed that her declaration didn't bring the surge of anxiety she would have expected years ago. He drew her into his arms, laughing between kisses, and she suddenly started to laugh too. She felt strangely delirious. They had stood against all adversity to be together, and now they would forge their own path to love. She would be Kai's wife. She would be the Commonwealth's empress. And she had every intention of being blissfully happy for ever, ever after.

To My Wife You are like a young white hen. Her feathers ruffle in the wind, her neck curves down to drink, and she rummages in the earth: but, in walking, she has your slow, queenly step, haughty and proud. She is better than the male. She is like the females of all the serene animals who draw near to God. Here, if my eye, if my judgment doesn’t deceive me, among these, you find your equals, and in no other woman. When evening lulls the little hens to sleep, they make sounds that call to mind those mild, sweet voices with which you argue with your pains, and don’t know that your voice has the soft, sad music of the henyard. You are like a pregnant heifer, still free, and without heaviness, merry, in fact; who, if someone strokes her, turns her neck, where a tender pink tinges her flesh. If you meet up with her, and hear her bellow, so mournful is this sound that you tear at the earth to give her a present. In the same way, I offer my gift to you when you are sad. You are like a tall, thin female dog, that always has so much sweetness in her eyes and ferociousness in her heart. At your feet, she seems a saint who burns with an indomitable fervor and in this way looks at you as her God and Lord. When you are at home, or going down the street, to anyone who tries, uninvited, to approach you, she uncovers her shining white teeth. And her love suffers from jealousy. You are like the fearful rabbit. Within her narrow cage, she stands upright to look at you, and extends her long, still ear; she deprives herself of the husks and roots that you bring her, and cowers, seeking the darkest corners. Who might take away this food? Who might take away the fur which she tears from her back to add to the nest where she will give birth? Who would ever make you suffer? You are like the swallow which returns in the spring. But each autumn will depart— you don’t have this art. You have this of the swallow: the light movements; that which, to me, seemed and was old, you proclaim another spring. You are like the provident ant. She whom the grandmother speaks of to the child as they go out in the countryside. And thus I find you in the bumble bee and in all the females of all the serene animals who draw near to God. And in no other woman.

And in an apartment on the other side of town, everyone wakes up with a start when the hound in the first-floor flat, without any warning, starts howling. Louder and more heartrendingly than anything they have ever heard coming out of the primal depths of any animal. As if it is singing with the sorrow and yearning of an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. It howls for hours, all through the night, until dawn. And when the morning light seeps into the hospital room, Elsa wakes up in Granny's arms. But Granny is still in Miamas.

Grandma smiled brightly. “How lovely! It seems your whore has arrived.” Jake groaned and covered his face with his hands. There was no way out of it. His grandmother was going to get him shot. A&E women scorned, here I come. “Excuse me?” Aileen put her hands on her hips and did a weird head nod at Grandma, and nearly teetered off her high heels. Oh, this wasn’t good. Not good at all. Grandma reached out and patted Aileen’s arm. “Sweetheart, I’m the one with hearing aids, not you. I called you a whore. Would you like me to spell it for you, too?” She nudged Jake. “What did you do? Find her at a high school career fair?” And then in a horrifyingly loud voice she began spelling. “W-H-O-R-E.

Tell me about the war,” he pressed cautiously. She smiled again and began, “Well . . .” The sentence ended there. Her tongue moved but no words emerged. He wanted to say, Tell me because I’d like to tell my grandchildren one day. Tell me because it happened to you, and so I should know. Tell me because it will bring me closer to you, and I want to be close to you. But he was fifteen years old, and he didn’t know how to express thoughts like these. He only knew that he wanted to know. He could tell that she would tell him anything but anything, only if he could stand it please don’t make her talk about that. And though he grasped how important it was for him to know— even if everyone in the family had acquiesced not to trouble Grandmother about it— he couldn’t bring himself to make her. So he said to her: “Forget about the war. Tell me about how you and Grandfather fell in love.

There’s a word for the first blush of youthful love free of desire. For longing to be with someone so much you would rather throw yourself to the tides than be without them. For the stale but steady relationship between faithful members of an arranged marriage. For how to feel about someone you thought was everything but ended up never feeling the same way about you. For the poison left over when you love someone and it ends so badly you cannot release the feelings. For the love between a mother and her children, a father and his children, a grandmother and her progeny, the love between two dear friends, the love that is the first building block of a lifelong affair. There’s even a word for a love so devastating nothing before or after is ever seen the same.

Shall I tell you the secret of true love?" her father once asked her. "A friend of mine liked to tell me that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why? Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that remind her of her grandmother's porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one woman loves wild geraniums." "That's Mama!" Inej had cried. "Yes, Mama loves wild geraniums because no other flower has quite the same color, and she claims that when she snaps the stem and puts a sprig behind her ear, the whole world smells like summer. Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.

He had not stopped looking into her eyes, and she showed no signs of faltering. He gave a deep sigh and recited: "O sweet treasures, discovered to my sorrow." She did not understand. "It is a verse by the grandfather of my great-great-grandmother," he explained. "He wrote three eclogues, two elegies, five songs, and forty sonnets. Most of them for a Portuguese lady of very ordinary charms who was never his, first because he was married, and then because she married another man and died before he did." "Was he a priest too?" "A soldier," he said. Something stirred in the heart of Sierva María, for she wanted to hear the verse again. He repeated it, and this time he continued, in an intense, well-articulated voice, until he had recited the last of the forty sonnets by the cavalier of amours and arms Don Garcilaso de la Vega, killed in his prime by a stone hurled in battle.When he had finished, Cayetano took Sierva María's hand and placed it over his heart. She felt the internal clamor of his suffering. "I am always in this state," he said. And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask: "And now?" "And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know." He could not go on. Weeping in silence, he slipped his arm beneath her head to serve as a pillow, and she curled up at his side. And so they remained, not sleeping, not talking, until the roosters began to crow and he had to hurry to arrive in time for five-o'clock Mass. Before he left, Sierva María gave him the beautiful necklace of Oddúa: eighteen inches of mother-of-pearl and coral beads. Panic had been replaced by the yearning in his heart. Delaura knew no peace, he carried out his tasks in a haphazard way, he floated until the joyous hour when he escaped the hospital to see Sierva María. He would reach the cell gasping for breath, soaked by the perpetual rains, and she would wait for him with so much longing that only his smile allowed her to breathe again. One night she took the initiative with the verses she had learned after hearing them so often. 'When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me," she recited. And asked with a certain slyness: "What's the rest of it?" "I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end," he said. She repeated the lines with the same tenderness, and so they continued until the end of the book, omitting verses, corrupting and twisting the sonnets to suit themselves, toying with them with the skill of masters. They fell asleep exhausted. At five the warder brought in breakfast, to the uproarious crowing of the roosters, and they awoke in alarm. Life stopped for them.

you see, my whole life is tied up to unhappiness it's father cooking breakfast and me getting fat as a hog or having no food at all and father proving his incompetence again i wish i knew how it would feel to be free it's having a job they won't let you work or no work at all castrating me (yes it happens to women too) it's a sex object if you're pretty and no love or love and no sex if you're fat get back fat black woman be a mother grandmother strong thing but not woman gameswoman romantic woman love needer man seeker dick eater sweat getter fuck needing love seeking woman it's a hole in your shoe and buying lil sis a dress and her saying you shouldn't when you know all too well that you shouldn't but smiles are only something we give to properly dressed social workers not each other only smiles of i know your game sister which isn't really a smile joy is finding a pregnant roach and squashing it not finding someone to hold let go get off get back don't turn me on you black dog how dare you care about me you ain't go no good sense cause i ain't shit you must be lower than that to care it's a filthy house with yesterday's watermelon and monday's tears cause true ladies don't know how to clean it's intellectual devastation of everybody to avoid emotional commitment "yeah honey i would've married him but he didn't have no degree" it's knock-kneed mini skirted wig wearing died blond mamma's scar born dead my scorn your whore rough heeeled broken nailed powdered face me whose whole life is tied up to unhappiness cause it's the only for real thing i know

I have entered the place I thought was death and it has turned out to be life itself. I entered this Ache alone, but inside it I have found everyone. In surrendering to the Ache of loneliness I have discovered un-loneliness. Right here, inside the Ache, with everyone who has welcomed a child or held the hand of a dying grandmother or said goodbye to a great love. I am here, with all of them. ... Inside the ache is “We.” We can do hard things like be alive and love deep and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth with her arms, eyes, and heart wide open. The Ache is not a flaw. It’s our meeting place. It’s the clubhouse of the brave. All the lovers are there. It is where you go alone to meet the world. The ache is love. The ache was never warning me “this ends, so leave.” She was saying “this ends, so stay.

I know you are more feminine than the other boys. I know you love dresses and flowers and playing with your grandmother’s jewelry. And I love that about you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with who you are, and I will support you no matter what. But I also want to help you understand the world you’re growing up in. You are growing up in a world where many people—your brother, your father, your classmates, your peers, random strangers on the street, you name it—are going to be hostile toward you because of your femininity. People are going to spend most of your life making you feel less than. Knowing that, I want to help you make an informed decision. Would you rather go as a more socially acceptable costume, like a pumpkin or some equally stupid vegetable, thereby avoiding the torment of your peers? Or are you ready to put on a dress and bravely face the world? Whatever you choose, I will support you and love you and hug you when it feels like too much. Okay?”*

V drifts into talking about generations. How grandparents and grandchildren so often get along very well. Remove one generation—twenty-five years at least—and the anger in both directions dissipates. All the failed expectations and betrayals become cleansed by an intervention of time. Resentment and bitter need for retribution fall away. Love becomes the operative emotion. On the old side, you’re left with wrinkled age and whatever fractured, end-of-the-line knowledge might have accrued. Wisdom as exhaustion. And on the other side—which V still remembers with molecular vividness—youth and yearning and urgency for something not yet fully defined. Undiluted hope and desire. But by fusing the best of both sides, a kind of intertwining consciousness arises—grandmother and granddaughter wisdom emerging from shared hope, relieved of emotions tainted by control and guilt and anger. —I’ll assume you’re right, James says. But I wouldn’t know much about long family relationships. When I was

Traffic was in confusion for several days. For red to mean "stop' was considered impossibly counterrevolutionary. It should of course mean "go." And traffic should not keep to the right, as was the practice, it should be on the left. For a few days we ordered the traffic policemen aside and controlled the traffic ourselves. I was stationed at a street corner telling cyclists to ride on the left. In Chengdu there were not many cars or traffic lights, but at the few big crossroads there was chaos. In the end, the old rules reasserted themselves, owing to Zhou Enlai, who managed to convince the Peking Red Guard leaders. But the youngsters found justifications for this: I was told by a Red Guard in my school that in Britain traffic kept to the left, so ours had to keep to the right to show our anti-imperialist spirit. She did not mention America. As a child I had always shied away from collective activity. Now, at fourteen, I felt even more averse to it. I suppressed this dread because of the constant sense of guilt I had come to feel, through my education, when I was out of step with Mao. I kept telling myself that I must train my thoughts according to the new revolutionary theories and practices. If there was anything I did not understand, I must reform myself and adapt. However, I found myself trying very hard to avoid militant acts such as stopping passersby and cutting their long hair, or narrow trouser legs, or skirts, or breaking their semi-high-heeled shoes. These things had now become signs of bourgeois decadence, according to the Peking Red Guards. My own hair came to the critical attention of my schoolmates. I had to have it cut to the level of my earlobes. Secretly, though much ashamed of myself for being so "petty bourgeois," I shed tears over losing my long plaits. As a young child, my nurse had a way of doing my hair which made it stand up on top of my head like a willow branch. She called it "fireworks shooting up to the sky." Until the early 1960s I wore my hair in two coils, with rings of little silk flowers wound around them. In the mornings, while I hurried through my breakfast, my grandmother or our maid would be doing my hair with loving hands. Of all the colors for the silk flowers, my favorite was pink.

He squeezed into one of the pews and knelt. It had been a long time since he had been here. What should he say? Phrases from his childhood came to him, dusty and inchoate. Out of habit, he began reciting the Lord’s prayer, but the real thoughts, his actual prayers, interrupted before he finished. He asked for his grandmother to rest in eternal peace. He asked for God to watch over his parents. He prayed that Cleo not be in pain. He prayed for her and Frank to be happy again. He asked for mercy for Anders. He prayed that Lila be allowed to dance, wherever she was. His grandmother had always told him not to pray for himself, but at the very end he did. He prayed for the courage to talk to Dominique. He asked for love to come to him again. Finally, he humbly asked God for the strength to bear his hungry heart , the heaviest weight of all to bear.

I put my back against the wall. I slide down to the floor. I imagine Ryan sitting next to me. I imagine him rubbing my back, the way he did when my grandfather died. I imagine him saying, "She's going to a better place. She's OK." I imagine the way my grandfather might have done this for my grandmother when she lost her own mom or her own grandmother. I imagine my grandmother sitting where I am now, my grandfather kneeling beside her, telling her all the things I want to be told. Holding her the way that only someone in particular can hold you. When I'm her age, when I'm lying in a hospital bed, ready to die, whom will I be thinking of? It's Ryan. It's always been Ryan. Just because I can live without him doesn't mean I want to. And I don't. I don't want to. I want to hear his voice. The way it is rough but sometimes smooth and almost soulful. I want to see his face, with his stubble from never shaving down to the skin. I want to smell him again. I want to hold the roughness of his hands. I want to feel the way they envelop mine, dwarfing them, making me feel small. I need my husband.

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says. It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'" Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

When Calvin, Meg, and Mr. Murray make their desperate tesser from Camazotz to Ixchel, Mr. Murray tries to explain to Meg and Calvin the nature of the Dark Thing and IT. His thesis has an eerie resonance today, positing that a planet can become dark because of totalitarianism (and specific dictators are named on both sides of the political spectrum). But a planet can also become dark because of "too strong a desire for security... the greatest evil there is." Meg resists her father's analysis. What's wrong with wanting to be safe? Mr. Murray insists that "lust for security" forces false choices and a panicked search for safety and conformity. This reminded me that my grandmother would get very annoyed anyone would talk about "the power of live." Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk- not safety and security- that we overcome darkness.

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits. They closed the doors and windows again so as not to waste time getting undressed and they walked about the house as Remedios the Beauty had wanted to do and they would roll around naked in the mud of the courtyard, and one afternoon they almost drowned as they made love in the cistern. In a short time they did more damage than the red ants: they destroyed the furniture in the parlor, in their madness they tore to shreds the hammock that had resisted the sad bivouac loves of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and they disemboweled the mattresses and emptied them on the floor as they suffocated in storms of cotton. Although Aureliano was just as ferocious a lover as his rival, it was Amaranta ?rsula who ruled in that paradise of disaster with her mad genius and her lyrical voracity, as if she had concentrated in her love the unconquerable energy that her great-great-grandmother had given to the making of little candy animals. And yet, while she was singing with pleasure and dying with laughter over her own inventions, Aureliano was becoming more and more absorbed and silent, for his passion was self-centered and burning. Nevertheless, they both reached such extremes of virtuosity that when they became exhausted from excitement, they would take advantage of their fatigue. They would give themselves over to the worship of their bodies, discovering that the rest periods of love had unexplored possibilities, much richer than those of desire. While he would rub Amaranta ?rsula’s erect breasts with egg whites or smooth her elastic thighs and peach-like stomach with cocoa butter, she would play with Aureliano’s portentous creature as if it were a doll and would paint clown’s eyes on it with her lipstick and give it a Turk’s mustache with her eyebrow pencil, and would put on organza bow ties and little tinfoil hats. One night they daubed themselves from head to toe with peach jam and licked each other like dogs and made mad love on the floor of the porch, and they were awakened by a torrent of carnivorous ants who were ready to eat them alive.

He shut the door, and stood looking across the room at her. 'Cressy, what did you mean when you told that harridan that your affections were engaged?' The colour deepened a little in her cheeks, but she replied lightly: 'Well, she talked so much like someone in a bad play that I became carried away myself! Besides, I had to say something to convince her! I could see she didn't quite believe me when I said I wasn't going to marry your brother.' He let his breath go in a long sigh, and walked forward, setting his hands on her shoulders, and saying: 'You don't know how much I have wanted to tell you the truth! Cressy, my dear one, forgive me! I've treated you abominably, and I love you so much!' Miss Stavely, who had developed an interest in the top button of his coat, looked shyly up at this. 'Do you, Kit?' she asked. 'Truly?' Mr Fancot, preferring actions to words, said nothing whatsoever in answer to this, but took her in his arms and kissed her. Miss Stavely, who had previously thought him unfailingly gentle and courteous, perceived, in the light of this novel experience, that she had been mistaken: there was nothing gentle about Mr Fancot's crushing embrace; and his behaviour in paying no heed at all to her faint protest could only be described as extremely uncivil. She was wholly unused to such treatment, and she had a strong suspicion that her grandmother would condemn her conduct in submitting to it, but as Mr Fancot seemed to be dead to all sense and propriety it was clearly useless to argue with him.

There are three ways you can live life—three again—remember that the great writers almost always do things in threes. You can live life as though it’s all a cosmic accident; we’re nothing but an irritating skin disease on the face of the earth. Maybe you can live your life as though everything’s a bad joke. I can’t.” They couldn’t, either, though for some of the kids who sat around the table that day not much had happened to make them think that life is anything else. “Or you can go out at night and look at the stars and think, yes, they were created by a prime mover, and so were you, but he’s aloof perfection, impassible, indifferent to his creation. He doesn’t care, or, if he cares, he only cares about the ultimate end of his creation, and so what happens to any part of it on the way is really a matter of indifference. You don’t matter to him, I don’t matter to him, except possibly as a means to an end. I can’t live that way, either.” Again there was general agreement. “Then there’s a third way: to live as though you believe that the power behind the universe is a power of love, a personal power of love, a love so great that all of us really do matter to him. He loves us so much that every single one of our lives has meaning; he really does know about the fall of every sparrow, and the hairs of our head are really counted. That’s the only way I can live.

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages. It's like, don't touch my shit. It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-pff-a-hickory-switch mode.

Jina langu ni Enock Maregesi na ningependa kukwambia kisa kidogo kuhusiana na bibi yangu, Martha Maregesi. Mwanamke huyu alikuwa mke mwenye upendo usiokuwa na masharti yoyote. Alikuwa mama na bibi aliyefundisha familia yake umuhimu wa kujitolea na umuhimu wa uvumilivu. Ijapokuwa hakupendelea sana kujizungumzia mwenyewe, ningependa kukusimulia kisa kidogo kuhusiana na hadithi ya maisha ya mwanamke huyu wa ajabu katika maisha yangu. Bibi yangu alizaliwa katika Kitongoji cha Butimba, Kijiji cha Kome, Kata ya Bwasi, Tarafa ya Nyanja (Majita), Wilaya ya Musoma Vijijini, Mkoa wa Mara, katika familia ya watoto kumi, mwaka 1930. Alisoma katika Shule ya Msingi ya Kome ambako alipata elimu ya awali na msingi na pia elimu ya kiroho kwani shule yao ilikuwa ya madhehebu ya Kisabato. Aliolewa na Bwana Maregesi Musyangi Sabi mwaka 1946, na kufanikiwa kupata watoto watatu; wa kiume wakiwa wawili na wa kike mmoja. Matatizo hasa ya bibi yalianza mwaka 2005, alipougua kiharusi akiwa nyumbani kwake huko Musoma. Hata hivyo alitibiwa hapo Musoma na Dar es Salaam akapona na kuwa mwenye afya ya kawaida. Lakini tarehe 19/10/2014 alipatwa tena na kiharusi na kulazwa tena katika Hospitali ya Mkoa ya Musoma, ila akajisikia nafuu na kuruhusiwa kurudi nyumbani – lakini kwa maagizo ya daktari ya kuendelea na dawa akiwa nje ya hospitali. Tarehe 29/10/2014 alirudi tena Hospitali ya Mkoa ya Musoma kwa tiba zaidi, lakini tarehe 4/11/2014 saa 7:55 usiku akafariki dunia; akiwa amezungukwa na familia yake. Dunia ina watu wachache sana wenye matumaini na misimamo ya kutegemea mazuri, na wachache zaidi ambao wako tayari kugawa matumaini na misimamo hiyo kwa watu wengine. Nitajisikia furaha siku zote kwamba miongoni mwa watu hao wachache, hata bibi yangu alikuwemo. Msalaba uliwekwa wakfu na Mwenyezi Mungu baada ya mwili wa Yesu Kristo kuning’inizwa juu yake. Kwa kuwa bibi yangu ametanguliwa na msalaba, msalaba utamwongoza mahali pa kwenda.

And I am overwhelmed now by the awfulness of over-simplification. For now I realize that not only have I been guilty of it through this long and burning day but also through most of my yet young life and it is only now that I am doubly its victim that I begin to vaguely understand. For I had somehow thought that ‘going away’ was but a physical thing. And that it had only to do with movement and with labels like the silly ‘Vancouver’ that I had glibly rolled from off my tongue; or with the crossing of bodies of water or with the boundaries of borders. And because my father told me I was ‘free’ I had foolishly felt that it was really so. Just like that. And I realize now that the older people of my past are more complicated than perhaps I had ever thought. And that there are distinctions between my sentimental, romantic grandfather and his love for coal, and my stern and practical grandmother her hatred of it; and my quietly strong but passive mother and the souring extremes of my father’s passionate violence and the quiet power of his love. They are all so different. Perhaps it is possible I think now to be both and yet to see only one. For the man in whose glassed-in car I now sit sees only similarity. For him the people of this multi-scarred little town are reduced to but a few phrases and the act of sexual intercourse. They are only so many identical goldfish leading identical, incomprehensible lives within the glass prison of their bowl. And the people on the street view me from behind my own glass in much the same way and it is the way that I have looked at others in their ‘foreign licence’ cars and it is the kind of judgment that I myself have made. And yet it seems that neither these people nor this man are in any way unkind and not to understand does not necessarily mean that one is cruel. But one should at least be honest. And perhaps I have tried too hard to be someone else without realizing at first what I presently am. I do not know. I am not sure. But I do know that I cannot follow this man into a house that is so much like the one I have left this morning and go down into the sexual embrace of a woman who might well be my mother. And I do not know what she, my mother, may be like in the years to come when she is deprived of the lighting movement of my father’s body and the hammered pounding of his heart. For I do not know when he may die. And I do not know in what darkness she may cry out his name nor to whom. I do not know very much of anything, it seems, except that I have been wrong and dishonest with others and myself. And perhaps this man has left footprints on a soul I did not even know that I possessed.

THE GHOST OF THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER HAS A CONVERSATION WITH HIS FIANCÉE ABOUT HIGHWAYS ...and down south, honey. When the side of the road began to swell with dead and dying things, that's when us black children knew it was summer. Daddy didn't keep clocks in the house. Ain't no use when the sky round those parts always had some flames runnin' to horizon, lookin' like the sun was always out. back when I was a little girl, I swear, them white folk down south would do anything to stop another dark thing from touching the land, even the nighttime. We ain't have streetlights, or some grandmotherly voice riding through the fields on horseback tellin' us when to come inside. What we had was the stomach of a deer, split open on route 59. What we had was flies resting on the exposed insides of animals with their tongues touching the pavement. What we had was the smell of gunpowder and the promise of more to come, and, child, that'll get you home before the old folks would break out the moonshine and celebrate another day they didn't have to pull the body of someone they loved from the river. I say 'river' because I want you to always be able to look at the trees without crying. When we moved east, I learned how a night sky can cup a black girl in its hands and ask for forgiveness. My daddy sold the pistol he kept in the sock drawer and took me to the park. Those days, I used to ask him what he feared, and he always said "the bottom of a good glass." And then he stopped answering. And then he stopped coming home altogether. Something about the first day of a season, honey. Something always gotta sacrifice its blood. Everything that has its time must be lifted from the earth. My boys don't bother with seasons anymore. My sons went to sleep in the spring once and woke up to a motherless summer. All they know now is that it always be colder than it should be. I wish I could fix this for you. I'm sorry none of my children wear suits anymore. I wish ties didn't remind my boys of shovels, and dirt, and an empty living room. They all used to look so nice in ties. I'm sorry that you may come home one day to the smell of rotting meat, every calendar you own, torn off the walls, burning in a trashcan. And it will be the end of spring. And you will know.

Poem for My Father You closed the door. I was on the other side, screaming. It was black in your mind. Blacker than burned-out fire. Blacker than poison. Outside everything looked the same. You looked the same. You walked in your body like a living man. But you were not. would you not speak to me for weeks would you hang your coat in the closet without saying hello would you find a shoe out of place and beat me would you come home late would i lose the key would you find my glasses in the garbage would you put me on your knee would you read the bible to me in your smoking jacket after your mother died would you come home drunk and snore would you beat me on the legs would you carry me up the stairs by my hair so that my feet never touch the bottom would you make everything worse to make everything better i believe in god, the father almighty, the maker of heaven, the maker of my heaven and my hell. would you beat my mother would you beat her till she cries like a rabbit would you beat her in a corner of the kitchen while i am in the bathroom trying to bury my head underwater would you carry her to the bed would you put cotton and alcohol on her swollen head would you make love to her hair would you caress her hair would you rub her breasts with ben gay until she stinks would you sleep in the other room in the bed next to me while she sleeps on the pull-out cot would you come on the sheet while i am sleeping. later i look for the spot would you go to embalming school with the last of my mother's money would i see your picture in the book with all the other black boys you were the handsomest would you make the dead look beautiful would the men at the elks club would the rich ladies at funerals would the ugly drunk winos on the street know ben pretty ben regular ben would your father leave you when you were three with a mother who threw butcher knives at you would he leave you with her screaming red hair would he leave you to be smothered by a pillow she put over your head would he send for you during the summer like a rich uncle would you come in pretty corduroys until you were nine and never heard from him again would you hate him would you hate him every time you dragged hundred pound cartons of soap down the stairs into white ladies' basements would you hate him for fucking the woman who gave birth to you hate him flying by her house in the red truck so that other father threw down his hat in the street and stomped on it angry like we never saw him (bye bye to the will of grandpa bye bye to the family fortune bye bye when he stompled that hat, to the gold watch, embalmer's palace, grandbaby's college) mother crying silently, making floating island sending it up to the old man's ulcer would grandmother's diamonds close their heartsparks in the corner of the closet yellow like the eyes of cockroaches? Old man whose sperm swims in my veins, come back in love, come back in pain.

Subject: Some boat Alex, I know Fox Mulder. My mom watched The X-Files. She says it was because she liked the creepy store lines. I think she liked David Duchovny. She tried Californication, but I don't think her heart was in it. I think she was just sticking it to my grandmother, who has decided it's the work of the devil. She says that about most current music,too, but God help anyone who gets between her and American Idol. The fuzzy whale was very nice, it a little hard to identify. The profile of the guy between you and the whale in the third pic was very familiar, if a little fuzzy. I won't ask. No,no. I have to ask. I won't ask. My mother loves his wife's suits. I Googled. There are sharks off the coast of the Vineyard. Great big white ones. I believe you about the turtle. Did I mention that there are sharks there? I go to Surf City for a week every summer with my cousins. I eat too much ice cream. I play miniature golf-badly. I don't complain about sand in my hot dog buns or sheets. I even spend enough time on the beach to get sand in more uncomfortable places. I do not swim. I mean, I could if I wanted to but I figure that if we were meant to share the water with sharks, we would have a few extra rows of teeth, too. I'll save you some cannoli. -Ella Subject: Shh Fiorella, Yes,Fiorella. I looked it up. It means Flower. Which, when paired with MArino, means Flower of the Sea. What shark would dare to touch you? I won't touch the uncomfortable sand mention, hard as it is to resist. I also will not think of you in a bikini (Note to self: Do not think of Ella in a bikini under any circumstanes. Note from self: Are you f-ing kidding me?). Okay. Two pieces of info for you. One: Our host has an excellent wine cellar and my mother is European. Meaning she doesn't begrudge me the occasional glass. Or four. Two: Our hostess says to thank yur mother very much. Most people say nasty things about her suits. Three: We have a house kinda near Surf City. Maybe I'll be there when your there. You'd better burn this after reading. -Alexai Subect: Happy Thanksgiving Alexei, Consider it burned. Don't worry. I'm not showing your e-mails to anybody. Matter of national security, of course. Well,I got to sit at the adult table. In between my great-great-aunt Jo, who is ninety-three and deaf, and her daughter, JoJo, who had to repeat everyone's conversations across me. Loudly. The food was great,even my uncle Ricky's cranberry lasagna. In fact, it would have been a perfectly good TG if the Eagles han't been playing the Jets.My cousin Joey (other side of the family) lives in Hoboken. His sister married a Philly guy. It started out as a lively across-the-table debate: Jets v. Iggles. It ended up with Joey flinging himself across the table at his brother-in-law and my grandmother saying loud prayers to Saint Bridget. At least I think it was Saint Bridget. Hard to tell. She was speaking Italian. She caught me trying to freeze a half-dozen cannoli. She yelled at me. Apparently, the shells get really soggy when they defrost. I guess you'll have to come have a fresh one when you get back. -F/E

They will eat him alive. On his current course, Henry will fail spectacularly.” My chest constricts so tight it feels like my bones may crack. Because she’s right. “He won’t.” “You don’t know that,” she swipes back. “I damn well do! I never would have abdicated otherwise.” “What?” “Don’t mistake me—I wouldn’t have married anyone but Olivia, and I would’ve waited a lifetime if I had to, until the laws were changed. But I didn’t because I knew in my heart and soul that Henry will not just be a good king, he will be better than I ever could’ve been.” For a moment I don’t breathe. I can’t. The shock of my brother’s words has knocked the air right out of my lungs. Granny’s too, if her whisper is any indication. “You truly believe that?” “Absolutely. And, frankly, I’m disheartened that you don’t.” “Henry has never been one to rise to the occasion,” she states plainly. “He’s never needed to,” my brother insists. “He’s never been asked—not once in his whole life. Until now. And he will not only rise to the occasion . . . he will soar beyond it.” The Queen’s voice is hushed, like she’s in prayer. “I want to believe that. More than I can say. Lend me a bit of your faith, Nicholas. Why are you so certain?” Nicholas’s voice is rough, tight with emotion. “Because . . . he’s just like Mum.” My eyes close when the words reach my ears. Burning and wet. There’s no greater compliment—not to me—not ever. But, Christ, look at me . . . it’s not even close to true. “He’s exactly like her. That way she had of knowing just what a person needed—whether it was strength or guidance, kindness or comfort or joy—and effortlessly giving it to them. The way people used to gravitate to her . . . at parties, the whole room would shift when she walked in . . . because everyone wanted to be nearer to her. She had a light, a talent, a gift—it doesn’t matter what it’s called—all that matters is that Henry has it too. He doesn’t see it in himself, but I do. I always have.” There’s a moment of quiet and I imagine Nicholas leaning in closer to the Queen. “The people would have followed me or Dad for the same reason they follow you—because we are dependable, solid. They trust our judgment; they know we would never let them down. But they will follow Henry because they love him. They’ll see in him their son, brother, best friend, and even if he mucks it up now, they will stick with him because they will want him to succeed. I would have been respected and admired, but Grandmother . . . he will be beloved. And if I have learned anything since the day Olivia came into my life, it’s that more than reasoning or duty, honor or tradition . . . love is stronger.

Because you deserve a duke, damn it!” A troubled expression furrowed his brow. “You deserve a man who can give you the moon. I can’t. I can give you a decent home in a decent part of town with decent people, but you…” His voice grew choked. “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. It destroys me to think of what you’ll have to give up to be with me.” “I told you before-I don’t care!” she said hotly. “Why can’t you believe me?” He hesitated a long moment. “The truth?” “Always.” “Because I can’t imagine why you’d want me when you have men of rank and riches at your fingertips.” She gave a rueful laugh. “You grossly exaggerate my charms, but I can’t complain. It’s one of many things I adore about you-that you see a better version of me than I ever could.” Remembering the wonderful words he’d said last night when she’d been so self-conscious, she left the bed to walk up to him. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?” His wary gaze locked with hers. “Proper Pinter. Proud Pinter.” “Yes, but that’s just who you show to the world to protect yourself.” She reached up to stroke his cheek, reveling in the ragged breath that escaped him. “When you let down your guard, however, I see Jackson-who ferrets out the truth, no matter how hard. Who risks his own life to protect the weak. Who’d sacrifice anything to prevent me from having to sacrifice everything.” Catching her hand, he halted its path. “You see a saint,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not a saint; I’m a man with needs and desires and a great many rough edges.” “I like your rough edges,” she said with a soft smile. “If I’d really wanted a man of rank and riches, I probably would have married long ago. I always told myself I couldn’t marry because no one wanted me, but the truth was, I didn’t want any of them.” She fingered a lock of hair. “Apparently I was waiting for you, rough edges and all.” His eyes turned hot with wanting. Drawing her hand to his lips, he kissed the palm so tenderly that her heart leapt into her throat. When he lifted his head, he said, “Then marry me, rough edges and all.” She swallowed. “That’s what you say now, when we’re alone and you’re caught up in-“ He covered her mouth with his, kissing her so fervently that she turned into a puddle of mush. Blast him-he always did that, too, when they were alone; it was when they were with others that he reconsidered their being together forever. And he still had said nothing of live. “That’s enough of that,” she warned, drawing back from him. “Until you make a proper proposal, before my family, you’re not sharing my bed.” “Sweeting-“ “Don’t you ‘sweeting’ me, Jackson Pinter.” She edged away from him. “I want Proper Pinter back now.” A mocking smile crossed his lips. “Sorry, love. I threw him out when I saw how he was mucking up my private life.” Love? No, she wouldn’t let that soften her. Not until she was sure he wouldn’t turn cold later. “You told Oliver you’d behave like a gentleman.” “To hell with your brother.” He stalked her with clear intent. Even as she darted behind a chair to avoid him, excitement tore through her. “Aren’t you still worried Gran will cut me off, and you’ll be saddled with a spoiled wife and not enough money to please her?” “To hell with your grandmother, too. For that matter, to hell with the money.” He tossed the chair aside as if it were so much kindling; it clattered across the floor. “It’s you I want.