Holidays Without Mom Quotes

Oskar Schell: My father died at 9-11. After he died I wouldn't go into his room for a year because it was too hard and it made me want to cry. But one day, I put on heavy boots and went in his room anyway. I miss doing taekwondo with him because it always made me laugh. When I went into his closet, where his clothes and stuff were, I reached up to get his old camera. It spun around and dropped about a hundred stairs, and I broke a blue vase! Inside was a key in an envelope with black written on it and I knew that dad left something somewhere for me that the key opened and I had to find. So I take it to Walt, the locksmith. I give it to Stan, the doorman, who tells me keys can open anything. He gave me the phone book for all the five boroughs. I count there are 472 people with the last name black. There are 216 addresses. Some of the blacks live together, obviously. I calculated that if I go to 2 every Saturday plus holidays, minus my hamlet school plays, my minerals, coins, and comic convention, it's going to take me 3 years to go through all of them. But that's what I'm going to do! Go to every single person named black and find out what the key fits and see what dad needed me to find. I made the very best possible plan but using the last four digits of each phone number, I divide the people by zones. I had to tell my mother another lie, because she wouldn't understand how I need to go out and find what the key fits and help me make sense of things that don't even make sense like him being killed in the building by people that didn't even know him at all! And I see some people who don't speak English, who are hiding, one black said that she spoke to God. If she spoke to god how come she didn't tell him not to kill her son or not to let people fly planes into buildings and maybe she spoke to a different god than them! And I met a man who was a woman who a man who was a woman all at the same time and he didn't want to get hurt because he/she was scared that she/he was so different. And I still wonder if she/he ever beat up himself, but what does it matter? Thomas Schell: What would this place be if everyone had the same haircut? Oskar Schell: And I see Mr. Black who hasn't heard a sound in 24 years which I can understand because I miss dad's voice that much. Like when he would say, "are you up yet?" or... Thomas Schell: Let's go do something. Oskar Schell: And I see the twin brothers who paint together and there's a shed that has to be clue, but it's just a shed! Another black drew the same drawing of the same person over and over and over again! Forest black, the doorman, was a school teacher in Russia but now says his brain is dying! Seamus black who has a coin collection, but doesn't have enough money to eat everyday! You see olive black was a gate guard but didn't have the key to it which makes him feel like he's looking at a brick wall. And I feel like I'm looking at a brick wall because I tried the key in 148 different places, but the key didn't fit. And open anything it hasn't that dad needed me to find so I know that without him everything is going to be alright. Thomas Schell: Let's leave it there then. Oskar Schell: And I still feel scared every time I go into a strange place. I'm so scared I have to hold myself around my waist or I think I'll just break all apart! But I never forget what I heard him tell mom about the sixth borough. That if things were easy to find... Thomas Schell: ...they wouldn't be worth finding. Oskar Schell: And I'm so scared every time I leave home. Every time I hear a door open. And I don't know a single thing that I didn't know when I started! It's these times I miss my dad more than ever even if this whole thing is to stop missing him at all! It hurts too much. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll do something very bad.

What if—” I stopped, swallowing hard. Nope. I couldn’t even say it aloud. We’d figure something else out because we had to. Time for a subject change before I lost it. “What did your mom say?” “Mostly that she thinks my hair is getting too long and I should cut it.” “That’s not helpful.” “That’s my mom for you.” He was trying for humor but his voice caught, and I wondered if he was thinking about how if she left and he didn’t, he’d never ever see her again. “So,” I said, sitting on the floor against the wall as close to the kitchen doorway as I could get without Lend dropping like a rock, “do you want your Christmas present?” “You got me something?” He sounded surprised. “I’ve been working on it for a while.” “I, uh, didn’t find you anything yet. I was actually setting up for your party, not Christmas shopping like I said.” “Being kidnapped by the Dark Queen and then cursed gets you off the hook for a lot. Besides, my birthday party totally counted.” “This isn’t how I wanted our first Christmas to go. We were going to go all out, pick out a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, decorate it, watch cheesy holiday movies, drink hot chocolate, let my dad make his eggnog and then complain about how disgusting it was, then I was going to deck out my entire room in mistletoe . . .” “Wait, you mean you didn’t plan for us to be stuck in different rooms for the holidays?” “Well, that part’s kind of nice.” I heard his head bang against the wall where he was sitting right on the other side of it from me. “I mean, who wants to actually be able to touch their super hot girlfriend? Overrated.” “I know, right?” I tried to laugh, but it came out choked. I swallowed, forcing my one to come out light. “And I totally dig watching people sleep. It’s so sexy.

But first, please tell me your name. I really would like to know it.” “Sophia.” She looked up at him at last. “But my friends call me Sophie.” Sylvan smiled, being careful not to show his fangs this time. “I hope to someday call you that but I think I’d better stick to Sophia for now.” She sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I was nasty to you earlier. I know you’re not exactly to blame for what’s happened and you’re just doing what you do, making a genetic trade or whatever. It’s just that…my sister is my best friend and I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her again.” “You’ll still see her,” Sylvan objected. “Kindred brides are allowed to return to their home planet on most of the major holidays.” “Great, so I get to see her for Christmas and Thanksgiving? Two or three days out of the year? Thanks a lot!” Sophia leaned forward and looked at him. “Let me tell you something—Liv and I have never gone a whole day without speaking to each other in our lives. Even when we were babies my mom said we would cry and cry if you took one of us out of the room, away from the other one. And after our parents died, we got even closer. So please try to understand. I love her—she’s all I have left and I just can’t lose her like this.” Sylvan nodded gravely. “I can see your point. There is a similar bond between Baird and myself. We have the same father and we’ve saved each other’s lives many times in battle. I would be sad to only see him a few days of the year.” “So you get it.” She touched his knee lightly for emphasis and Sylvan felt his shaft harden in response. “How would you feel if I was threatening to take your brother and best friend away from you for basically the rest of his life?” she asked earnestly. “I wouldn’t like it.” Sylvan shifted uncomfortably, hoping she couldn’t see the evidence of her effect on him in his tight black uniform pants. “I guess the only way around your dilemma is for you to be claimed by a warrior yourself. Then you could see your sister every day on our ship.” “Oh…oh, no!

But given all the inherent limitations in recording dreams, interpreting them, comparing them to subsequent and prior events across the span of a whole lifetime, and sharing them with others, there would really be no way to make a firm assessment of how many dreams may relate to future experiences, and certainly no way to make an estimate that would hold water scientifically. We have to appeal to the philosopher’s reason on this question: if anywhere near a quarter of them can be shown reasonably to be precognitive, then it is reasonable that many more may be precognitive and we just don’t detect them as such. You will seldom see precognition if you aren’t looking for it, and until now, few have looked for it. The worst mistake would be to assume that, since precognition is hard to fathom, the brain therefore finds it hard to do. That’s a fallacy. If you accept the basic premise that some dreams do relate to future experiences, it raises the reasonable—indeed natural—question: Why would evolution create a brain that reaches into its own future but only manifest that ability occasionally? Might all dreams be precognitive? It may really be a mistake to speak of precognitive dreams as some distinct set of dreams targeting a future event versus one in the past. Dunne suspected that dreams draw equally on past and future experiences.5 Again, dreams that seem to be about past experiences, per our cultural assumptions or per some standard dream theory like Freud’s, could simply be using past bricks (identifiable items and experiences in memory) to pre-present some future experience that goes unnoticed by the dreamer or dream researcher. Thus, coming to some realistic estimate of the true prevalence of dream precognition is the kind of question that is going to require many precognitive dreamworkers sharing their experiences to help answer. The bottom line is this: we should stop thinking of precognition as something like the special holiday china our moms kept in a certain cupboard and brought out just once a year. Our brains likely use it every day, every night, possibly even every dream, for all occasions big and small. If the brain ever does it, it probably always does it. Principle #9 of precognitive dreamwork isn’t a conclusion so much as a working presumption: Assume (without ever being able to prove it) that all your dreams may be precognitive.

The rest of it, the fasting, prayers, and holidays, mean nothing without my family or even a community. Growing up, Mom opted for a Unitarian church, an institution that probably grew out of necessity

There is a knock at the door and Mom answers it. “Hi, Joe, how are you doing?” “Terrific, I hope you have enough room in your refrigerator for this big bird! The Blisses send their best wishes.” Joe, a very thin wiry man, came close to stumbling over the threshold as he juggled the big, cold, slippery bird through the living room ‘round to our kitchen and into the refrigerator. “Thanks Joe, Happy Thanksgiving to you and all your family. Can you stay for a cup of coffee and some warm cookies?” “No thanks, I’m pressed for time and have a few more stops to make. I’ll see you at Christmas time.” We always saw Joe Lynch every Thanksgiving and Christmas making his rounds with the gift Turkeys from the Blisses. One year we saw him in the grocery store and he asked my Mom, “How many pounds should the bird be this year?” Whether Thanksgiving or Christmas, the gift birds were always appreciated and would always be stuffed with Grandma’s secret recipe dressing passed down from her family in Argentina. One of the secret ingredients is Gulden’s mustard. It just wouldn’t be the holidays without that heavenly aroma teasing our senses for hours.