Pushed Out The Family Quotes

Nico scowled. ‘It’s none of your business, but I don’t belong. That’s obvious. No one wants me. I’m a child of –’ ‘Oh, please.’ Will sounded unusually angry. ‘Nobody at Camp Half-Blood ever pushed you away. You have friends – or at least people who would like to be your friend. You pushed yourself away. If you’d get your head out of that brooding cloud of yours for once –

Your mom seems like someone who gets her way a lot." Adrian cast a covert look to where Lissa and my mom stood talking across the room. He lowered his voice. "It must run in the family. In fact, maybe I should get her help on something." "Getting a hold of illegal cigarettes?" "Asking her daughter out." I nearly dropped the plate I held. "You've asked me out tons of times." "Not really. I've made inappropriate suggestions and frequently pushed for nudity. But I've never asked you out on a real date. And, if memory serves, you did say you'd give me a fair chance once I let you clean out my trust fund." "I didn't clean it out," I scoffed.

It's not reasonable to love people who are only going to die," she said. Nash thought about that for a moment, stroking Small's neck with great deliberation, as if the fate of the Dells depended on that smooth, careful movement. "I have two responses to that," he said finally. "First, everyone's going to die. Second, love is stupid. It has nothing to do with reason. You love whomever you love. Against all reasons I loved my father." He looked at her keenly. "Did you love yours?" "Yes," she whispered. He stroked Small's nose. "I love you," he said, "even knowing you'll never have me. And I love my brother, more than I ever realized before you came along. You can't help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it's liable to cause you to do." She made a connection then. Surprised she sat back from him and studied his face, soft with shadows and light. She saw a part of him she hadn't seen before. "You came to me for lessons to guard your mind," she said, "and you stopped asking me to marry you, both at the same time. You did those things out of love for your brother." "Well" he said, looking a bit sheepishly at the floor. "I also took a few swings at him, but that's neither here nor there." "You're good at love," she said simply, because it seemed to her that it was true. "I'm not so good at love. I'm like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away." He shrugged. "I don't mind you pushing me away if it means you love me, little sister.

He trailed his eyes down over her beautiful breasts then told her, “You’re going to keep your mouth shut and I’m going togive you that Orgasm you asked for.” He thought for a moment she was going to tell him to get lost, but instead she leaned her head back against the wall and pushed her hips out toward him.

Times like this it did seem real I was leaving, and even more that my family, and this life, would go on without me. And again I felt that emptiness rise up, but pushed it away. Still, I lingered there, in the doorway, memorizing the noise. The moment. Tucking it away out of sight, to be remembered when I needed it most.

And you're everything I don't want." Julie pushed away, breaking his embrace, and shook her head. "If you loved me, you couldn't have done this. You couldn't have been so careless with me. You know pain, and loss, and hurt better than anyone." She hated each word as it came out of her mouth. "And that's what you gave me. I know that it's not the same. I know yours is worse. I'm so sorry for you, Matt. For your whole family. You've all been through hell. And you've been braver than anyone could. But I hurt now, too. And I can't love you.

I haven't had a lot of good, soft things in my life," he said against my forehead. "Not since my family sent me away. Apart from being your sire and feeling that pull to you, it's that goodness, that softness and warmth, along with the resolve and strength in you, that I love. Being turned hasn't taken that from you. If someone were going to design the perfect mate for me, it would be you. Even when you infuriate me with your pigheaded stubbornness and your temper and incredible lack of anything resembling self-preservation—" "Stop describing me please." "You're the most fascinating, maddening, adorable creature I've ever met," he said, sighing and pushing my hair out of my eyes. "So, when I seem possessive or I'm raving like a lunatic, it's just that part of me is still very afraid that I'll lose that—that I'll lose you. I love you.

Ron held up his badge. Mrs Weasley let out a shriek just like Hermione’s. ‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Oh, Ron, how wonderful! A prefect! That’s everyone in the family!’ ‘What are Fred and I, next-door neighbours?’ said George indignantly, as his mother pushed him aside and flung her arms around her youngest son.

New Rule: If an Evangelical tries to use Halloween to pimp Jesus to kids, they get to egg his house. On Halloween, the president of the American Family Association urged his flock to hand out a Christian-based comic book instead of candy. Excuse me, Halloween isn't a time to push your beliefs. You don't see me handing out pot to kids...Okay, well not the little kids.

I came to this house for safety. They came because the foster care system ran out of homes. We stayed because we were stray pieces of other puzzles, tired of never fitting.

They look at you odd. They say why don’t you do something? I HAVE done everything possible. It does occupy your mind, but like anything painful, you push it to one side. It’s in the bottom compartment; it comes out every so often. If I knew he was dead, I could grieve.

Now Preacher might manage a bar and hang out with men primarily, but he was unaccustomed to fathers who pushed their children out of sight. Rudely, at that. In his crowd, families were appreciated. Most of his friends were married with children, and the children were a part of everything. The women were nearly worshiped.

The people of Japan believed they had only one way of moving up: to have their children educated more than they were; that it was very important for them to move out of their peasantry to become educated. So there has been a great energy in the family to encourage the children to do well in school, and to be pushed forward. Because of this tendency to learn things all the time, new ideas from the outside would spread through the educational system very easily. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Japan has advanced so rapidly.

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…

The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit." If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.

Butterfly, I need you to get this,” he interrupted me firmly. “I’ve been in love with you since high school. I’ll be in love with you when you walk down the aisle to me, push out our first kid, our second, our third, cry when they go off to college, nag at them to give you grandbabies, and sit next to me on our couch in our pad in assisted living. I got that. I got my family. I got my brothers. I’m healed. You do not have to go off keyin’ my dad’s car. I’m good. Stop tryin’ to make me that way. You already got me there.

When you were young and experienced traumas or attachment injuries, you didn’t have enough body or mind to protect yourself. Your Self couldn’t protect your parts, so your parts lost trust in your Self as the inner leader. They may even have pushed your Self out of your body and took the hit themselves—they believed they had to take over and protect you and your other parts. But in trying to handle the emergency, they got stuck in that parentified place and carry intense burdens of responsibility and fear, like a parentified child in a family.

As soon as we were inside, Edwart's family rushed to greet me. What seemed like thirty people circled me, chattering away. "Oh my god, you smell good." "Good smell, good smell." "(she really does smell good.)" "do you mind if I put my nose right on you? Right on your arm?" "More smelly smelly please." "If I could destroy every part of my brain except the part that smelled your smell, I would do it. I would do it in a second." "Let's go, Belle," Edwart whispered and grabbed my hand. We pushed through the ravenous vampires nad out the front door. "So that went well!" I said outside in the U-HAUL. I sniffed my hair. I did smell good. "No, no, that wasn't my house," Edwart said, starting the truck. "I don't even know those people! Sometimes I get addresses confused.

Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young children, but in the best situations, there should be no power struggles by the time those children have become adults - just deep connection, trust, and respect between people who sincerely care about each other. In disruptive families, children are taught to remain one-up or one-down into adulthood. And this produces immature adults who either seek to dominate others (one-up) or who allow themselves to be dominated (one-down) in their relationships - one powerful and one needy, one enabling and one addicted, one decisive and one confused. In relationships with these people, manipulation abounds. Especially when they start to feel out of control.

Everyone has a price, Kaylee. You just have to be willing to push until you figure out what it is.

Create a safe zone. Every parent quickly learns that every child—and every adult—handles conflict differently. Some push back when criticized, some turn inward, some break down in tears.

WAIT, WAIT! JUST one more!” “Bliss, there are children waiting.” And they probably hated us, but I was just so glad to see her smiling that I didn’t care. “Yeah, well, they all just jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them weren’t alive when I read Harry Potter for the first time.” I turned to the Canadian family behind me and said, “I’m so sorry. This is the last one, I promise.” Then I took one more picture of Bliss pretending to push the luggage cart through the wall at the Platform 9¾ monument at King’s Cross Station. A little boy stuck his tongue out at Bliss as we left. I pulled her away before she could follow suit. “That kid better watch it. I’m totally a Slytherin.” I shook my head, smiling. “Love, I’m going to need you to pull back on the crazy a bit.” “You’re right. Realistically, I’m a Ravenclaw.

I had a long talk with my husband last night. And he made me realize that I have to choose which voices to believe. I can believe the ones that tell me I'm not good enough or brave enough or pretty enough and let them skew my perception of events, or I can push aside that clamor and seek out the voice that tells me I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

I was a fool!" Percy roared,so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph. "I was a pompous prat, I was a- a-" "Ministry loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron," said Fred. Percy swallowed. "Yes, I was!" "Well, you can't say fairer than that," said Fred, holding out his hand to Percy. Mrs Weasley burst into tears. She ran forwards, pushed Fred aside and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father. "I'm sorry, Dad," Percy said. Mr Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he, too, hurried to hug his son. "What made you see sence, Perce?" enquired George. " It's been coming on for a while," said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses with a corner of his travelling cloak. "But I had to find a way out and it's not so easy at the Ministry, they're imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight of it, so here I am." "Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these," said George, in a good imitation of Percy's most pompous manner. "Now let's get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters''ll be taken.

She pressed her hands against my chest and tried to push me away. "I can't think straight when you 're this close." I backed her up against the wall. "I don't like the thoughts running through your head. I plan on staying here until you look me in the eye and tell me you 're mine." "This isn't going to work. It never would have." "Bullshit. We belong together." Echo sniffed and the sound tore at me. I softened my voice. "Look at me, baby. I know you love me. Three nights ago you were willing to offer everything to me. There is no way you can walk away from us." "God Noah..." Her voice broke. "I'm a mess." A mess? "You 're beautiful." "I'm a mental mess. In two months you 're going to face some judge and convince him that you are the best person to raise your brothers. I'm a liability." "Not true. My brothers will love you and you 'll love them. You are not a liability." "But how will the judge see me? Are you really willing too take that risk? [...] What happens if the judge find out about me? What if he discovers what a mess you 're dating?" Breathing became a painful chore. Her lips turned down while her warm fingers caressed my cheek. That touch typically brought me to knees, but now it cut me open. "Did you know that when you stop being stubborn and accept i may be right on something, your eyes widen a little and you tilt your head to the side?" she asked. I forced my head straight and narrowed my eyes. "I love you." She flashed her glorious smile and then it became the saddest smile in the world. "You love your brothers more. I'm okay with that. In fact, it's one of the things i love about you. You were right the other day. I do want to be a part of a family. But i'd never forgive myself if i was the reason you didn't get yours." To my horror, tears pricked my eyes and my throat swelled shut. "No, you 're not pulling this sacrificial bullshit on me. I love you and you love me and we 're supposed to be together." Echo pressed her body to mine and her fingers clung to my hair. Water glistened in her eyes. "I love you enough to never make you choose." She pushed off her toes toward me, guiding my head down, and gently kissed my lips. No. This wouldn't be goudbye. I'd fill her up and make her realize she'd always be empty without me. I made Echo mine. My hands claimed her hair, her back. My lips claimed her mouth, her tongue. Her body shook against mine and i tasted salty wetness on her skin. She forced her lips away and i latched tighter to her. "No, baby, no," i whispered into her hair. She pushed her palms against my chest, then became a blur as she ran past. "I'm sorry.

Members of the flock who demand accountability from sick leaders are quietly pushed out the back door. Mother-Judah had become that kind of leader—a compassionless narcissist. Never burden a narcissist, or you will be quickly discarded. Lamentations, pg Intro

It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back. Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing. It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one addition after another to hold its teeming life - here a sleeping porch for the children, and there a veranda for the play-pen; here a garage for the extra car and there a shed for the bicycles. It amuses me because it seems so much like my life at the moment, like most women's lives in the middle years of marriage. It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations....

Do not freak out when you lose your friends, partners, lovers, family, job and experience physical challenges. It is a temporary time of recalibration. It will balance itself out, when you allow your fears to transform in a loving way, as they now push to the surface seeking your recognition, and validation.

Well,’ my mother says the next day as I arrive by her bedside with a fresh pot of tea. ‘What should we do?’ I look at her, puzzled. ‘Do?’ Until now, I thought we’d spend our time together doing very little, or nothing at all, and that I’d be miserable, although I’d hide it and deny it. I imagined, in other words, that we’d see one another, as we always have, across a divide. ‘The rain seems to be holding off for now,’ my mother continues, glancing out of her window. ‘Perhaps we could take a walk in the garden?’ ‘You think you can walk?’ ‘No. But there’s a wheelchair on the back porch. Do you feel fit enough to push me around?’ ‘Well,’ I say, brightly. ‘That would certainly make a nice change.’ My mother snaps her head around and glowers at me. Confused, I replay the final lines of conversation in my head, then panic. ‘No, no,’ I say, backtracking. ‘I meant a nice change from being holed up in the bedroom.’ My mother continues to regard me with her penetrating stare. ‘Of course, you did,’ she says, drily.

If you are like most people, you have an assortment of friends and family you can call upon in times of trouble. For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge business to come and rescue you.

In praise of mu husband's hair A woman is alone in labor, for it is an unfortunate fact that there is nobody who can have the baby for you. However, this account would be inadequate if I did not speak to the scent of my husband's hair. Besides the cut flowers he sacrifices his lunches to afford, the purchase of bags of licorice, the plumping of pillows, steaming of fish, searching out of chic maternity dresses, taking over of work, listening to complaints and simply worrying, there was my husband's hair. His hair has always amazed stylists in beauty salons. At his every first appointment they gather their colleagues around Michael's head. He owns glossy and springy hair, of an animal vitality and resilience that seems to me so like his personality. The Black Irish on Michael's mother's side of the family have changeable hair--his great-grandmother's hair went from black to gold in old age. Michael's went from golden-brown of childhood to a deepening chestnut that gleams Modoc black from his father under certain lights. When pushing each baby I throw my arm over Michael and lean my full weight. When the desperate part is over, the effort, I turn my face into the hair above his ear. It is as though I am entering a small and temporary refuge. How much I want to be little and unnecessary, to stay there, to leave my struggling body at the entrance. Leaves on a tree all winter that now, in your hand, crushed, give off a dry, true odor. The brass underside of a door knocker in your fingers and its faint metallic polish. Fresh potter's clay hardening on the wrist of a child. The slow blackening of Lent, timeless and lighted with hunger. All of these things enter into my mind when drawing into my entire face the scent of my husband's hair. When I am most alone and drowning and I think I cannot go on, it is breathing into his hair that draws me to the surface and restores my small courage.

So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me. "Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie." "I see," she said. "Well, I'd think that would get boring, everyone having the same name." I thought about this, then said, "Okay, then her name is Sabrina." "Well, that's a very nice name," Boo said. I remember she was baking bread, kneading the dough between her thick fingers. "What does she do?" "Do?" I said. "Yes." She flipped the dough over and started in on it from the other side. "What does she do?" "She goes out with Ken," I said. "And what else?" "She goes to parties," I said slowly. "And shopping." "Oh," Boo said, nodding. "She can't work?" "She doesn't have to work," I said. "Why not?" "Because she's Barbie." "I hate to tell you, Caitlin, but somebody has to make payments on that town house and the Corvette," Boo said cheerfully. "Unless Barbie has a lot of family money." I considered this while I put on Ken's pants. Boo started pushing the dough into a pan, smoothing it with her hand over the top. "You know what I think, Caitlin?" Her voice was soft and nice, the way she always spoke to me. "What?" "I think your Barbie can go shopping, and go out with Ken, and also have a productive and satisfying career of her own." She opened the oven and slid in the bread pan, adjusting its position on the rack. "But what can she do?" My mother didn't work and spent her time cleaning the house and going to PTA. I couldn't imagine Barbie, whose most casual outfit had sequins and go-go boots, doing s.uch things. Boo came over and plopped right down beside me. I always remember her being on my level; she'd sit on the edge of the sandbox, or lie across her bed with me and Cass as we listened to the radio. "Well," she said thoughtfully, picking up Ken and examining his perfect physique. "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I remember this moment so well; I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross- legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother's PTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina, and led right to me. "Well," I said abruptly, "I want to be in advertising." I have no idea where this came from. "Advertising," Boo repeated, nodding. "Okay. Advertising it is. So Sabrina has to go to work every day, coming up with ideas for commercials and things like that." "She works in an office," I went on. "Sometimes she has to work late." "Sure she does," Boo said. "It's hard to get ahead. Even if you're Barbie." "Because she wants to get promoted," I added. "So she can pay off the town house. And the Corvette." "Very responsible of her," Boo said. "Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" "She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.

Another sign of those with an “elder brother” spirit is joyless, fear-based compliance. The older son boasts of his obedience to his father, but lets his underlying motivation and attitude slip out when he says, “All these years I’ve been slaving for you.” To be sure, being faithful to any commitment involves a certain amount of dutifulness. Often we don’t feel like doing what we ought to do, but we do it anyway, for the sake of integrity. But the elder brother shows that his obedience to his father is nothing but duty all the way down. There is no joy or love, no reward in just seeing his father pleased. In the same way, elder brothers are fastidious in their compliance to ethical norms, and in fulfillment of all traditional family, community, and civic responsibilities. But it is a slavish, joyless drudgery. The word “slave” has strong overtones of being forced or pushed rather than drawn or attracted. A slave works out of fear—fear of consequences imposed by force. This gets to the root of what drives an elder brother. Ultimately, elder brothers live good lives out of fear, not out of joy and love.

It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away. Every day millions of people pass away—in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation, e-mails to the corpse’s friends—but people don’t die. Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath, join their dear ones in heaven, meet their Maker, ascend to a better place, succumb surrounded by family, return to the Lord, go home, cross over, or leave this world. Whatever the fatuous phrase, death usually happens peacefully (asleep) or after a courageous struggle (cancer). Sometimes women lose their husbands. (Where the hell did I put him?) Some expressions are less common in print: push up the daisies, kick the bucket, croak, buy the farm, cash out. All euphemisms conceal how we gasp and choke turning blue.

What about you, Neville?” said Ron. “Well, my gran brought me up and she’s a witch,” said Neville, “but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me — he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned — but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced — all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy.

He jerked the door open, ignored Leo’s suddenly furious growl and stomped back to the observation room. As he pushed through the door, Leo on his heels, he faced Elizabeth as she turned from something Ely was saying. He gripped her shoulders, bent and kissed her forehead gently. “I’m heading home, Mother. Please get Father off my back and out of my life for a day or so if you don’t mind. I do have family matters to take care of now.” Ignoring her surprise, he turned and stalked past Leo, back to the hall, and out of the small building that served as Sanctuary’s pre-detaining building. Calling Leo “father” didn’t sit well, but he was a Breed, created, not born, trained rather than raised. He wasn’t Jonas. After tonight, he would never call Leo “father” again perhaps, but he wouldn’t deny him any longer.

I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer. She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore.

How he led is no mystery. His techniques were time-honored. He knew his men. He saw to it that they had dry socks, enough food, sufficient clothing. He pushed them to but never beyond the breaking point. He got out of them more than they knew they had to give. His concern for them was that of a father for his son. He was the head of a family. He

Sometimes I help him out and sometimes he helps me out, and sometimes he tries to push me through the wall. (Dark City Lights)

You want them and grow them and push them out, but they happen to you.

Stop looking so bloody fetching," he said. He might as well have knocked her over, she was that surprised. He felt he'd been enticed into kissing her because of the way she looked?! What sort of nonsense was that? Hurt,and more than a little frustrated to have such a pleasant kiss end that way, she snapped back, "Excuse me while I go smear mud on my face," she pushed him out of her way to stomp down the corridor. "You'll find some in the backyard!" he called after her in what now sounded suspiciously like amusement. "Thank you!" she shouted back, not the least bit amused herself.

When dusk at last comes it comes from the corners, where it’s been waiting all day and seeps through Slough House the way ink seeps through water; first casting tendrils, then becoming smoky black cloud and at last being everywhere, the way it always wants to be. Its older brother night has broader footfall, louder voice, but dusk is the family sneak, a hoarder of secrets. In each of the offices it prowls by the walls, licking the skirting boards, testing the pipes and out on the landings it fondles doorknobs, slips through keyholes, and is content. It leans hard against the front door – which never opens, never closes –and pushes softly on the back, which james in all weathers; it presses down on every stair at once, making none of them creak, and peers through both sides of each window. In locked drawers it hunts for its infant siblings, and with everyone it finds it grows a little darker. Dusk is a temporary creature, and always has been. The faster it feeds, the sooner it yields to the night.

During the hiding time I lived for the day that the war would end, when I would be able to go into the hiding place, throw open the doors, and say to my friends, “Now go home!” This was not to be. Perhaps when the time comes for me to join Jan and our friends in the hereafter, I’ll push aside the bookcase, walk behind it, climb the steep wooden stairway, careful not to hit my head on the low ceiling where Peter nailed the old towel to it. Upstairs Jan will be leaning against the edge of the dresser, his long legs stretched out, the cat Mouschi in his arms. All the others will be sitting around the table and will greet me when I enter. And Anne, with her usual curiosity, will get up and rush toward me saying, “Hello, Miep. What is the news?” I doubt I have very long to wait. People ask me what it is like to have outlived almost everyone whose history I have shared. It is a strange feeling. Why me? Why was I spared the concentration camp after being caught helping to hide Jews? This I will never know.

As they pushed through the door a remarkable sight met their eyes: the Muskrat was sitting in the fork of a tree eating a pear. "Where's mother?" asked Moomintroll. "She's trying to get your father out of his room," replied the Muskrat, bitterly. "This is what comes of collecting plants. I've never quite trusted that Hemulen. Well, I hope the Muskrat heaven is a peaceful place, because I shan't be here much longer.

Cato, once it was clear that Caesar was the inevitable victor, killed himself at the town of Utica on the coast of what is now Tunisia in the most gory way imaginable. According to his biographer, writing 150 years later, he stabbed himself with his sword but survived the gash. Despite attempts by friends and family to save him, he pushed away the doctor they had summoned and pulled out his own bowels through the still open wound.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE.

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater. "No, mama." "Excuse me?" "No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat." "What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater." She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less. The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how to recognize and appreciate this kind of beauty in a woman. I have to show them, over and over again, mile after mile, until they feel the power of their own legs beneath them and catch the rhythm of their own strides. Which is why my parents wake my kids early on race-day mornings. It matters to me that my children see me out there, slogging through difficult miles. I want my girls to grow up recognizing the beauty of strength, the exuberance of endurance, and the core confidence residing in a well-tended body and spirit. I want them to be more interested in what they are doing than how they look doing it. I want them to enjoy food that is delicious, feed their bodies with wisdom and intent, and give themselves the freedom to indulge. I want them to compete in healthy ways that honor the cultivation of skill, the expenditure of effort, and the courage of the attempt. Grace and Bella, will you have any idea how lovely you are when you try? Recently we ran the Chuy's Hot to Trot Kids K together as a family in Austin, and I ran the 5-K immediately afterward. Post?race, my kids asked me where my medal was. I explained that not everyone gets a medal, so they must have run really well (all kids got a medal, shhh!). As I picked up Grace, she said, "You are so sweaty Mommy, all wet." Luke smiled and said, "Mommy's sweaty 'cause she's fast. And she looks pretty. All clean." My PRs will never garner attention or generate awards. But when I run, I am 100 percent me--my strengths and weaknesses play out like a cracked-open diary, my emotions often as raw as the chafing from my jog bra. In my ultimate moments of vulnerability, I am twice the woman I was when I thought I was meant to look pretty on the sidelines. Sweaty and smiling, breathless and beautiful: Running helps us all shine. A lesson worth passing along.

Barry prided himself on his ability to keep his lives separate. . . He was Bianca on two Saturday nights a month, and otherwise, he pushed her out of sight, even though he thought about her, shopped for her, planned for her eventual return. Barry went to faculty meetings and family reunions and church, Bianca always lingering on the edge of his mind. She had her role to play and Barry had his. You could live a life this way, split. As long as you knew who was in charge.

businesses lost after the recession, after Sandy, their retail corpses replaced by hotels and big box stores. The creep of wealth and whiteness that had slowly, steadily been frog boiling her hometown, pushing out and scattering families like her own.

A MAN HITS YOU ONCE and apologizes, and you think it will never happen again. But then you tell him you’re not sure you ever want a family, and he hits you once more. You tell yourself it’s understandable, what he did. You were sort of rude, the way you said it. You do want a family someday. You truly do. You’re just not sure how you’re going to manage it with your movies. But you should have been more clear. The next morning, he apologizes and brings you flowers. He gets down on his knees. The third time, it’s a disagreement about whether to go out to Romanoff’s or stay in. Which, you realize when he pushes you into the wall behind you, is actually about the image of your marriage to the public. The fourth time, it’s after you both lose at the Oscars. You are in a silk, emerald-green, one-shoulder dress. He’s in a tux with tails. He has too much to drink at the after-parties, trying to nurse his wounds. You’re in the front seat of the car in your driveway, about to go inside. He’s upset that he lost. You tell him it’s OK. He tells you that you don’t understand. You remind him that you lost, too. He says, “Yeah, but your parents are trash from Long Island. No one expects anything from you.” You know you shouldn’t, but you say, “I’m from Hell’s Kitchen, you asshole.

You’ve got her mad now and there’s no turning back. All she has to do is go to the authorities, saying you molested her. Is that what you want? One little phone call and your life is ruined.’ ‘But I didn’t do anything. I’m gay, remember?’ ‘That’s not going to save you,’ she said. ‘Push comes to shove and who do you think they’re going to believe, a nine-year-old girl or the full-grown man who gets his jollies carving little creatures out of balsa wood?’ ‘They’re NOT little creatures!’ I yelled. ‘They’re tool people!

Campbell’s slideshow lists grim domestic violence statistic after statistic: second leading cause of death for African American women, third leading cause of death for native women, seventh leading cause of death for Caucasian women. Campbell says twelve hundred abused women are killed every year in the United States.1 That figure does not count children. And it does not count the abusers who kill themselves after killing their partners, murder-suicides we see daily in the newspaper. And it does not count same-sex relationships where one or the other partner might not be “out.” And it does not count other family members, like sisters, aunts, grandmothers, who are often killed alongside the primary victim. And it does not count innocent bystanders: the twenty-six churchgoers in Texas, say, after a son-in-law has gone to a service to target his mother-in-law, or the two spa employees in Wisconsin killed alongside their client by her ex. The list is endless. And it does not count the jurisdictions who do not report their homicides, since homicide reporting is voluntary through the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reporting Data. So how many people are killed as a result of domestic violence each year? The bystanders, the other family members, the perpetrators’ suicides? The victims who just can’t take it anymore and kill themselves? The accidents that turn out not to be accidents at all, victims pushed out of cars and from cliffs or driven into trees. Tragedies forever uncategorized.

We must commit to pulling our brothers and sisters out of the river and also commit to going upstream to identify, confront, and hold accountable those who are pushing them in. We help parents bury their babies who were victims of gun violence. And we go upstream to fight the gun manufacturers and politicians who profit from their children’s deaths. We step into the gap to sustain moms who are raising families with imprisoned dads. And we go upstream to dismantle the injustice of mass incarceration. We fund recovery programs for those suffering from opioid addiction. And we go upstream to rail against the system that enables Big Pharma and corrupt doctors to get richer every time another kid gets hooked. We provide shelter and mentoring for LGBTQ homeless kids. And we go upstream to renounce the religious-based bigotry, family rejection, and homophobic policies that make LGBTQ kids more than twice as likely as their straight or cis-gender peers to experience homelessness. We help struggling veterans get the PTSD treatment they need and deserve, and we go upstream to confront the military-industrial complex, which is so zealous to send our soldiers to war and so willing to abandon them when they return.

I must go to him.” “Not dressed like that.” “For heaven’s sake, Leo, just this one time--” “No exceptions, darling. I know my sisters. Give any one of you an inch, and you’ll take a mile.” He reached out and pushed back her tumbling hair. “Also…don’t go without a chaperone.” “I don’t want a chaperone. That’s never any fun.” “Yes, Beatrix, that’s the purpose of a chaperone.” “Well, in our family, anyone who chaperoned me would probably need a chaperone more than I do.” Leo opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Rare was the occasion when her brother was unable to argue a point. Repressing a grin, Beatrix strode toward the house.

Hi there! I’m Kate! You must be a wandering trader. Can I play with your llamas?” She squeezed all her words out in one breath. Auggie was practically pushed back by the force of the girl. “Uh, yes? Sure. They are just llamas... I suppose you can-”  “YEEEE!!!” Kate screamed and ran back outside to play with the llamas.

Why do you think Lara is Lara Casnoff, and Mrs. Casnoff is Mrs. Casnoff?” Elodie whispered as she worked her magic on the enchanted door. “It’s her family name, right? So shouldn’t she be Miss Casnoff? Or Ms.?” Of all the things to wonder about, that’s what you’re focused on? Her marital status? “It’s weird, that’s all I’m saying,” she hissed in reply. You know you can talk to me in my head, right? You don’t have to talk out loud and make everyone think I’m a crazy person. Just FYI. “The only time I can talk is when I’m in your body, so sue me, I’m taking advantage of that.” Before we could snipe at each other anymore, the door suddenly gave way. Pushing it open, Elodie dashed inside, closing the door behind her. Lara Casnoff’s office was the total opposite of Mrs. Casnoff’s, complete with soaring bookcases and a heavy wooden desk so brightly polished that I could see myself in it. “Any idea on where we should start?” Elodie whispered. The desk, I finally said. It’ll be locked, and if it’s anything like Mrs. Casnoff’s desk, magic won’t work on it. There’s a nail in my pocket. Get it out, and I’ll talk you through jimmying the lock. Elodie’s disdain flooded over me, but she got the nail and went to work on the lock. “Were you a burglar in the real world?” she muttered as she worked.

From a very early age Edison became used to doing things for himself, by necessity. His family was poor, and by the age of twelve he had to earn money to help his parents. He sold newspapers on trains, and traveling around his native Michigan for his job, he developed an ardent curiosity about everything he saw. He wanted to know how things worked—machines, gadgets, anything with moving parts. With no schools or teachers in his life, he turned to books, particularly anything he could find on science. He began to conduct his own experiments in the basement of his family home, and he taught himself how to take apart and fix any kind of watch. At the age of fifteen he apprenticed as a telegraph operator, then spent years traveling across the country plying his trade. He had no chance for a formal education, and nobody crossed his path who could serve as a teacher or mentor. And so in lieu of that, in every city he spent time in, he frequented the public library. One book that crossed his path played a decisive role in his life: Michael Faraday’s two-volume Experimental Researches in Electricity. This book became for Edison what The Improvement of the Mind had been for Faraday. It gave him a systematic approach to science and a program for how to educate himself in the field that now obsessed him—electricity. He could follow the experiments laid out by the great Master of the field and absorb as well his philosophical approach to science. For the rest of his life, Faraday would remain his role model. Through books, experiments, and practical experience at various jobs, Edison gave himself a rigorous education that lasted about ten years, up until the time he became an inventor. What made this successful was his relentless desire to learn through whatever crossed his path, as well as his self-discipline. He had developed the habit of overcoming his lack of an organized education by sheer determination and persistence. He worked harder than anyone else. Because he was a consummate outsider and his mind had not been indoctrinated in any school of thought, he brought a fresh perspective to every problem he tackled. He turned his lack of formal direction into an advantage. If you are forced onto this path, you must follow Edison’s example by developing extreme self-reliance. Under these circumstances, you become your own teacher and mentor. You push yourself to learn from every possible source. You read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit. As much as possible, you try to apply your knowledge in some form of experiment or practice. You find for yourself second-degree mentors in the form of public figures who can serve as role models. Reading and reflecting on their experiences, you can gain some guidance. You try to make their ideas come to life, internalizing their voice. As someone self-taught, you will maintain a pristine vision, completely distilled through your own experiences—giving you a distinctive power and path to mastery.

That was the thing about storms. When you were in the middle of them, they felt so powerful. They felt as if they were driving your life, and you were left with no control over the way the winds blew you. That was why it was so important to have a core group of love surrounding you at all times. When you faced the storms together, when you held the hands of the ones you loved, and stood steady, the storms had a harder time pushing you over. The storms didn’t blow you away because you were linked to the world with love, the most powerful weapon that could be used during the mightiest of storms. And when the storm passed? You were left standing with the ones you loved, staring out at the rainbows.

A MAN HITS YOU ONCE and apologizes, and you think it will never happen again. But then you tell him you’re not sure you ever want a family, and he hits you once more. You tell yourself it’s understandable, what he did. You were sort of rude, the way you said it. You do want a family someday. You truly do. You’re just not sure how you’re going to manage it with your movies. But you should have been more clear. The next morning, he apologizes and brings you flowers. He gets down on his knees. The third time, it’s a disagreement about whether to go out to Romanoff’s or stay in. Which, you realize when he pushes you into the wall behind you, is actually about the image of your marriage to the public.

I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla. “Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls. “Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher standard than a marauding centurion.” “In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to have. This is what Peerless believe.” “The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say loudly. “Just come off it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, confident in himself as all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And before the strong, bend the weak.” “I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?” He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap. “You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior creature to you.” He smirks at that. “Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out. “I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up. “So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.” I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolfishly at one another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak. “But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus. You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this moment fifty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.” Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see my army dying as Mustang pulls off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers too. I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment. Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his eyes. “A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.” Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head. “You deserve to have your balls off, you selfish bastard,” I whisper to him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.” Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused. I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him, shoving. “What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather switch back toward his chest. “I don’t know what you mean …” he murmurs as I shove him. “Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.” I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip off my shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow. My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can do anything.

He knew he loved her in February: steam leaving the mug of coffee in her hands in thick curls; her hair a snarled mess around her shoulders; the morning on the other side of the window bitter and windswept; her face lovely, pale, and lonely in a way he didn’t understand. She sat in the chair in his bedroom, in his shirt and a pair of socks that went up to her knees, gooseflesh on her slender legs. A copy of Oliver Twist had been open across the arm of the chair. “I think it might snow today,” she’d said, and he’d been completely in love with her. He thought she might have loved him back in March: in from the rain; his clothes stuck to his skin; the umbrella showering the hardwood of her entry hall; the dinner she’d planned forgotten when he’d helped her out of her jacket and she’d been shivering with cold. That day, when she’d pushed his wet shirt back off his shoulders and stretched up on her toes to kiss him, he was sure there was something new shining deep down in her coffee-colored eyes. “You’re so cute,” she’d said, and he’d known: she loved him.

Bet you didn't know that when you agreed to be 'betrothed' to me, huh? Husband-eviscerating apparently runs in my family." Still no reaction, and I felt shame curl in my belly. "Of course, you also didn't know you were getting a damon bride," I added in a softer tone. Very few people knew what my dad really was. I'd always assumed Cal had found out the same night I did. That's why I was really surprised when he raised his head and said, "I knew." "What?" "I knew what you were then, Sophie. Your dad told me before the betrothal. And he told me about your grandmother, and what happened to your grandfather." I shook my head. "Then,why?" Cal took his time before answering. "For one thing, I like your dad. He's done good things for Prodigium. And it-" He broke off with a long exhale. "It felt like some kind of honor, you know? Being asked to be the head of the Council's son-in-law. Plus, your dad, he,uh,told me a lot about you." My voice was barely above a whisper. "What did he say?" "That you were smart, and strong. Funny. That you had trouble using your powers, but you were always trying to use them to help people." He shrugged. "I thought we'd be a good match." The vast dining room suddenly felt very small, like it consisted only of this table and me and Cal. "Look, Sophie," he started to say. But before he could finish, Jenna walked in. "I am so glad I still get to eat human food, because that bacon smells insane..." she said, and then froze. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her ealier bounciness draining out of her. "Sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt...whatever. I c-can...leave?" She gestured with her thumb over her shoulder. "And then come back,uh, later?" But the moment was broken. Cal sat back, and I pushed my hair behind my ears. "No,it's fine," I said quickly, concentrating harder on my eggs than I had on my SAT.

Bottoming out can vary from person to person; however, the general consensus reveals that the person usually has exhausted all resources, lacks self-love, and is practicing self-harm. The person may be allowing others to neglect and abuse him. While a bottom is in progress, denial is rampant and relatives or friends may have turned away. At this juncture, the adult child usually isolates or becomes involved in busy work to avoid asking for help. He scrambles to manipulate anyone who might still be having contact with him. Some adult children are at the other extreme. They have resources and speak of a bright future or new challenge; however, their bottom involves an inability to connect with others on a meaningful level. Their lives are unmanageable due to perfectionism and denial that seals them off from others. These are the high-functioning adults who seem to operate in the stratosphere of success. In their self-sufficiency they avoid asking for help, but they feel a desperate disconnect from life. Their bottom can be panic attacks without warning or bouts of depression that are pushed away with work or a new relationship.

I run thinking I will outpace it all, my will to change being stronger than my fear of living. My chest wet and leaf-raked, the day smoldering up at its edges, I push through so fast I feel like I've finally broken out of my body, left it behind. But when I turn around to see the panting boy, to forgive him, at last, for trying and failing to be good, there's no one there - only the full elms windless at the field's edge. Then, for no reason, I keep going. (...) I race through the field as if my cliff was never written into this story, as if I was no heavier than the words in my name. And like a word, I hold no weight in this world yet still carry my own life. And I throw it ahead of me until what I left behind becomes exactly what I'm running toward - like I'm part of a family.

Champs-de-Mars, the day of celebration: a crowd of people in Sunday clothes. Women with parasols, pet dogs on leads. Stickyfingered children pawing at their mothers; people who have bought coconuts and don’t know what to make of them. Then the glint of light on bayonets, people clutching hands, whirling children off their feet, pushing and calling out in alarm as they are separated from their families. Some mistake, there must be some mistake. The red flag of martial law is unfurled. What’s a flag, on a day of celebration? Then the horrors of the first volley. And back, losing footing, blood blossoming horribly on the grass, fingers under stampeding feet, the splinter of hoof on bone. It is over within minutes. An example has been made. A soldier slides from his saddle and vomits.

Someone stepped through the garage doorway. I squinted against the light. Mad Rogan. He wore a dark suit. It fit him like a glove, from the broad shoulders and powerful chest to the flat stomach and long legs. Well. A visit from the dragon. Never good. He started toward me. The track vehicle on his left slid out of his way, as if pushed aside by an invisible hand. The Humvee on his right slid across the floor. I raised my eyebrows. He kept coming, his blue eyes clear and fixed on me. I stepped back on pure instinct. My back bumped into the wall. The multiton hover tank hovered off to the wall. So that was the secret to making it work. You just needed Mad Rogan to move it around. Rogan closed in and stopped barely two inches from me. Anticipation squirmed through me, turning into a giddy excitement spiced with alarm. “Hi,” I said. “Are you planning on putting all of this back together the way you found it?” His eyes were so blue. I could look into them forever. He offered me his hand. “Time to go.” “To go where?” “Wherever you want. Pick a spot on the planet.” Wow. “No.” He leaned forward slightly. We were almost touching. “I gave you a week with your family. Now it’s time to go with me. Don’t be stubborn, Nevada. That kiss told me everything I needed to know. You and I both understand how this ends.” I shook my head. “How did this encounter go in your head? Did you plan on walking in here, picking me up, and carrying me away like you’re an officer and I’m a factory worker in an old movie?” He grinned. He was almost unbearably handsome now. “Would you like to be carried away?

was sprawled on the family-room couch, half asleep in front of a Clint Eastwood movie. A can of ginger ale and an empty bag of pretzels sat on the table in front of him. He opened one eye and saw Maura, then looked at Greg and winked. “Hey, little buddy . . . I see your ladyfriend is here.” Greg felt the urge to lash out, like he’d done with Eileen and Brittany at school on Friday morning. But this time he didn’t take the bait. He said, “We’re just copying some artwork. For a project we’re doing. And it’s gonna make noise. We have to.” Ross heaved himself up off the couch, shut off the TV, burped, mumbled, “’Scuse me” in Maura’s general direction, and went looking for a quieter place to waste another hour or two. Greg said, “I got this paper that’s good and bright, but it’s not as thick as regular copy paper. Makes it easier to fold.” After placing the first master sheet face down on the glass, he pushed Print, and then held up the copy for Maura to see. Pointing at a gray area, he said, “See that? I can change the settings and make that part darker. It ought to be solid black. Except for that, it’s a good copy.” The machine beeped as Greg made the change, and then he pushed the Print button.

Zach: Are you close with your brother? He’s partially to blame for the wrong number thing, isn’t he? * * * Me: Kind of. Yeah, we’re close. My mom worked at the hospital so it was usually just us two fending for ourselves. * * * Me: Okay, so I shouldn’t say fending for ourselves. That makes me sound like a dick and unappreciative of all my mom did. We just spent many nights just the two of us because my mom was a hardworking single lady and she wasn’t searching for a man to put a ring on it because she. Is. Fierce. * * * Zach: I bet your mom is the shit. * * * Me: She really is. You should meet her sometime. * * * Me: Oh, awkward…I’m talking about meeting the family and we’re not even officially a couple. * * * Zach: We’re not? * * * Me: We are? My phone lights up with a call from Zach. “Are you saying we aren’t dating?” he says before I can say anything. “We are…” “Are you saying you’re wanting to see other people?” “No…” “So then we’re a couple.” I’m quiet, unsure what to say. I’m so scared to label this, which is stupid, I know. “Delia?” “Yes, Zach?” “Do you not want to be?” I take a deep breath and push out the answer I know is right, even though my head is saying otherwise. “No. I want to be a couple.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. I’m just…scared. I know I shouldn’t put that all on you, but you’re kind of the reason I’m scared. I like you, Zach—a lot—but what if this doesn’t work out? What if we jump in too soon?” He sighs. “Remember when we were talking about our exes? About the lack of fireworks?” “Yeah.” “I swear to god, someone is going to swoop in and take my man card for this shit, but I felt them with you. When we first kissed, I knew right then you were worth jumping in with both feet and taking a risk.” I don’t let myself overthink his words, wanting to keep my head level and clear. “What if I’m not worth the risk?” “We’ll never know if we don’t take it.” “Say you’re a couple already, Dalilah!” Robbie’s voice comes loud through the speaker. “He paused the movie during an epic scene!” “How many times have I told you that her name is Delia. Deal-ya. Get it?” “You talk about me with Robbie?” I ask. “Sometimes.” “Say yes! He looks like someone kicked his goat!” “Shut the fuck up, Robbie!” I laugh. “If I say yes, will he stop shouting?” “YES!” Robbie shouts again. “I’ll take the risk, Zach, but you better be worth it.” “You’ve seen my Harry Potter underwear—you know I’m worth it.” Then he whispers, “Wink.

What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.

You know anything about farms?” “Worked on one, up in Marshall,” Virgil said. “One of the big corporate places owned by Hostess. Harvest time, I’d be out picking Ding Dongs and Ho Hos—we didn’t do Twinkies; those were mostly up along the Red River. We’d box them up, ship them off to the 7-Elevens. Hard work, but honest. I used the money to buy BBs, so I could feed my family. Most of the local workers have been pushed out by illegals, now.

American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights. Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushed us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on Mother Earth. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It's nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it's called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals. I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We're not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary — and, yes, at times, extraordinary — human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren't stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren't sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you'd see a protest! With all else that's been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part. Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!

Lia’s known Dean longer than any of us,” I said, mentally going through the details of the situation and the personalities involved. “No matter how many people come into this house, to Lia, they’ll always be a unit of two. But Dean…” “Unit of one,” Michael finished for me. “He’s Mr. Lone Wolf.” When things got bad, Dean’s impulse was to put up walls, to push other people away. But I’d never seen him shut Lia out before. She was his family. And this time, he’d left her on the outside—with us.

Mr Wonka Goes Too Far The last time we saw Charlie, he was riding high above his home town in the Great Glass Lift. Only a short while before, Mr Wonka had told him that the whole gigantic fabulous Chocolate Factory was his, and now our small friend was returning in triumph with his entire family to take over. The passengers in the Lift (just to remind you) were: Charlie Bucket, our hero. Mr Willy Wonka, chocolate-maker extraordinary. Mr and Mrs Bucket, Charlie’s father and mother. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, Mr Bucket’s father and mother. Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina, Mrs Bucket’s father and mother. Grandma Josephine, Grandma Georgina and Grandpa George were still in bed, the bed having been pushed on board just before take-off. Grandpa Joe, as you remember, had got out of bed to go around the Chocolate Factory with Charlie. The Great Glass Lift was a thousand feet up and cruising nicely. The sky was brilliant blue. Everybody on board was wildly excited at the thought of going to live in the famous Chocolate Factory. Grandpa Joe was singing. Charlie was jumping up and down. Mr and Mrs Bucket were smiling for the first time in years, and the three old ones in the bed were grinning at one another with pink toothless gums. ‘What in the world keeps this crazy thing up in the air?’ croaked Grandma Josephine. ‘Madam,’ said Mr Wonka, ‘it is not a lift any longer. Lifts only go up and down inside buildings. But now that it has taken us up into the sky, it has become an ELEVATOR. It is THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR.

I’m sorry, too. It’s not you I’m upset with. Not really. My parents used to bring me to events back when they still had dreams of me, their glorious firstborn, carrying on the family legacy. They thought if they forced me to ‘push through’ the discomfort it would eventually go away and I would grow out of it. But unfortunately, their attempts seemed to have the opposite effect. It took me going into a full-on panic at one of his speeches when I was eight for them to stop. It was so bad I ended up in the hospital.

We'll survive." Uncompromining will in those words, that face. "But I want you to feel comfortable pushing me, calling me out-" "When have I ever not done that?" He smiled. But I added, "I want you to do the same-for me." "Deal but amongst our family... call me on my bullshit all you want. I insist, actually." "Why?" "Because it's fun." I nudged him with an elbow. "Because you're my equal," he said. "And as much as that means having each other's backs in public, it also means that we grant each other the gift of honesty. Of truth.

Let me see if I understand this," Jaenelle said. [...] "You and Falonar have decided to go your own ways," Jaenelle said with a patience that made Surreal wary. She shrugged. "It was a mutual decision." The bastard. "Uh-huh. So you packed your bags..." "It was his eyrie," Surreal cut in. "I certainly didn't want to live there." And I didn't want to watch him courting Nurian in ways he never thought to court me. "...and left Ebon Rih without telling Lucivar." "Who would have strung Falonar up by the heels"... or by the balls, which might have been interesting to watch... "before having a little chat." "No," Jaenelle said, "he would have waited for Chaosti to show up, and then he would have strung Falonar up by the heels." She paused. "Maybe by the heels." Which just confirmed why Surreal had slipped away from Ebon Rih before Lucivar had time to notice. As the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih dealing with a Warlord Prince who was his second-in-command, Lucivar would have been nasty and explosive. Chaosti, the Warlord Prince of the Dea al Mon and a kinsman on her mother's side, would have approached Falonar with the protective viciousness that made Warlord Princes such a deadly facet of Blood society. Dealing with the male relatives she'd acquired since coming to Kaeleer was so much fun. "And you entered the Hall through one of the side doors to avoid seeing Daemon, who's working in his study and would have met you before you got out of the great hall." Feeling more wary by the minute, Surreal did her best to look indifferent. "No reason for him to get involved in this." Sweet Darkness, please don't let him think this is any business of his. "Besides, I don't need either of them getting all snarly and protective over something that was a mutual decision." "So instead of mentioning this to either of them, you went to the Keep and told Saetan." Surreal winced. "Well, I figured I should tell someone before leaving Ebon Rih." "Uh-huh. So you told the High Lord of Hell, the patriarch of this family, the man from whom Daemon and Lucivar inherited the temper you were trying to avoid." Jaenelle pushed the quilt aside and swung her legs over the side of the couch to sit up straight. "Did I miss something ?

Elon . . . gave a speech, saying we would work on Saturdays and Sundays and sleep under desks until it got done,” said Ryan Popple, the director of finance at Tesla. “Someone pushed back from the table and argued that everyone had been working so hard just to get the car done, and they were ready for a break and to see their families. Elon said, ‘I would tell those people they will get to see their families a lot when we go bankrupt.’ I was like, ‘Wow,’ but I got it. I had come out of a military culture, and you just have to make your objective happen.

They stood around a bleeding stump of a man lying on the ground. His right arm and left leg had been chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, he had crawled to the camp. The chopped-off arm and leg were tied in terrible bleeding chunks onto his back with a small wooden board attached to them; a long inscription on it said, with many words of abuse, that the atrocity was in reprisal for similar atrocities perpetrated by such and such a Red unit—a unit that had no connection with the Forest Brotherhood. It also said that the same treatment would be meted out to all the partisans unless, by a given date, they submitted and gave up their arms to the representatives of General Vitsyn’s army corps. Fainting repeatedly from loss of blood, the dying man told them in a faltering voice of the tortures and atrocities perpetrated by Vitsyn’s investigating and punitive squads. His own sentence of death had been allegedly commuted; instead of hanging him, they had cut off his arm and leg in order to send him into the camp and strike terror among the partisans. They had carried him as far as the outposts of the camp, where they had put him down and ordered him to crawl, urging him on by shooting into the air. He could barely move his lips. To make out his almost unintelligible stammering, the crowd around him bent low. He was saying: “Be on your guard, comrades. He has broken through.” “Patrols have gone out in strength. There’s a big battle going on. We’ll hold him.” “There’s a gap. He wants to surprise you. I know. ... I can’t go on, men. I am spitting blood. I’ll die in a moment.” “Rest a bit. Keep quiet.—Can’t you see it’s bad for him, you heartless beasts!” The man started again: “He went to work on me, the devil. He said: You will bathe in your own blood until you tell me who you are. And how was I to tell him, a deserter is just what I am? I was running from him to you.” “You keep saying ‘he.’ Who was it that got to work on you?” “Let me just get my breath. ... I’ll tell you. Hetman, Bekeshin. Colonel, Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You don’t know out here what it’s like. The whole town is groaning. They boil people alive. They cut strips out of them. They take you by the scruff of the neck and push you inside, you don’t know where you are, it’s pitch black. You grope about—you are in a cage, inside a freight car. There are more than forty people in the cage, all in their underclothes. From time to time they open the door and grab whoever comes first—out he goes. As you grab a chicken to cut its throat. I swear to God. Some they hang, some they shoot, some they question. They beat you to shreds, they put salt on the wounds, they pour boiling water on you. When you vomit or relieve yourself they make you eat it. As for children and women—O God!” The unfortunate was at his last gasp. He cried out and died without finishing the sentence. Somehow they all knew it at once and took off their caps and crossed themselves. That night, the news of a far more terrible incident flew around the camp. Pamphil had been in the crowd surrounding the dying man. He had seen him, heard his words, and read the threatening inscription on the board. His constant fear for his family in the event of his own death rose to a new climax. In his imagination he saw them handed over to slow torture, watched their faces distorted by pain, and heard their groans and cries for help. In his desperate anguish—to forestall their future sufferings and to end his own—he killed them himself, felling his wife and three children with that same, razor-sharp ax that he had used to carve toys for the two small girls and the boy, who had been his favorite. The astonishing thing was that he did not kill himself immediately afterward.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

He shook the nerves from his hand and touched the root again. Again it moved. The tiny fibers at the end came alive, reaching for him, twining around his fingertip. He looked around the hole, and he could now see tiny roots everywhere, pushing gently through the soil. The tree was growing right before his eyes. “You’re alive,” he whispered. Just then, he felt a sharp pain. The root had tightened, choking the tip of his finger. Kip jerked his hand back, trying to pull himself free—but the root would not let go. He pulled harder. “Ow!” he cried out as his hand finally came away. A gust of wind howled overhead. Kip looked up and saw leaves and loose dirt blowing into the hole, piling up around his feet. He tried to pull himself out of the hole, but a strong gust knocked him backward. Dirt and leaves poured down over his body, burying him. “Help!” Kip shouted, but he knew no one could hear him. Molly and the family were inside the house. Even Galileo was gone. More and more tiny roots came out of the soil, grasping at his legs, his arms, his neck. Kip screamed again, straining against the roots. His voice came back to him, muffled and small. He could barely move beneath the weight of dirt and leaves—a rustling, choking darkness. Kip twisted his body and felt something hard against his face—

Pay attention to everything the dying person says. You might want to keep pens and a spiral notebook beside the bed so that anyone can jot down notes about gestures, conversations, or anything out of the ordinary said by the dying person. Talk with one another about these comments and gestures. • Remember that there may be important messages in any communication, however vague or garbled. Not every statement made by a dying person has significance, but heed them all so as not to miss the ones that do. • Watch for key signs: a glassy-eyed look; the appearance of staring through you; distractedness or secretiveness; seemingly inappropriate smiles or gestures, such as pointing, reaching toward someone or something unseen, or waving when no one is there; efforts to pick at the covers or get out of bed for no apparent reason; agitation or distress at your inability to comprehend something the dying person has tried to say. • Respond to anything you don’t understand with gentle inquiries. “Can you tell me what’s happening?” is sometimes a helpful way to initiate this kind of conversation. You might also try saying, “You seem different today. Can you tell me why?” • Pose questions in open-ended, encouraging terms. For example, if a dying person whose mother is long dead says, “My mother’s waiting for me,” turn that comment into a question: “Mother’s waiting for you?” or “I’m so glad she’s close to you. Can you tell me about it?” • Accept and validate what the dying person tells you. If he says, “I see a beautiful place!” say, “That’s wonderful! Can you tell me more about it?” or “I’m so pleased. I can see that it makes you happy,” or “I’m so glad you’re telling me this. I really want to understand what’s happening to you. Can you tell me more?” • Don’t argue or challenge. By saying something like “You couldn’t possibly have seen Mother, she’s been dead for ten years,” you could increase the dying person’s frustration and isolation, and run the risk of putting an end to further attempts at communicating. • Remember that a dying person may employ images from life experiences like work or hobbies. A pilot may talk about getting ready to go for a flight; carry the metaphor forward: “Do you know when it leaves?” or “Is there anyone on the plane you know?” or “Is there anything I can do to help you get ready for takeoff?” • Be honest about having trouble understanding. One way is to say, “I think you’re trying to tell me something important and I’m trying very hard, but I’m just not getting it. I’ll keep on trying. Please don’t give up on me.” • Don’t push. Let the dying control the breadth and depth of the conversation—they may not be able to put their experiences into words; insisting on more talk may frustrate or overwhelm them. • Avoid instilling a sense of failure in the dying person. If the information is garbled or the delivery impossibly vague, show that you appreciate the effort by saying, “I can see that this is hard for you; I appreciate your trying to share it with me,” or “I can see you’re getting tired/angry/frustrated. Would it be easier if we talked about this later?” or “Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying and maybe it will come.” • If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Sometimes the best response is simply to touch the dying person’s hand, or smile and stroke his or her forehead. Touching gives the very important message “I’m with you.” Or you could say, “That’s interesting, let me think about it.” • Remember that sometimes the one dying picks an unlikely confidant. Dying people often try to communicate important information to someone who makes them feel safe—who won’t get upset or be taken aback by such confidences. If you’re an outsider chosen for this role, share the information as gently and completely as possible with the appropriate family members or friends. They may be more familiar with innuendos in a message because they know the person well.

Secular Israelis often complain bitterly that the ultra-Orthodox don’t contribute enough to society and live off other people’s hard work. Secular Israelis also tend to argue that the ultra-Orthodox way of life is unsustainable, especially as ultra-Orthodox families have seven children on average.32 Sooner or later, the state will not be able to support so many unemployed people, and the ultra-Orthodox will have to go to work. Yet it might be just the reverse. As robots and AI push humans out of the job market, the ultra-Orthodox Jews may come to be seen as the model for the future rather than as a fossil from the past. Not that everyone will become Orthodox Jews and go to yeshivas to study the Talmud. But in the lives of all people, the quest for meaning and community might eclipse the quest for a job. If we manage to combine a universal economic safety net with strong communities and meaningful pursuits, losing our jobs to algorithms might actually turn out to be a blessing. Losing control over our lives, however, is a much scarier scenario. Notwithstanding the danger of mass unemployment, what we should worry about even more is the shift in authority from humans to algorithms, which might destroy any remaining faith in the liberal story and open the way to the rise of digital dictatorships.

...Mother had always advised against sharing domestic troubles outside the family. They would only return as unwelcome rumor. But I trusted Eleanor, so when we stopped to admire the waves crashing and the cry of the seagulls, I spoke of the changes in my marriage, hoping for some insight to my dilemma. 'My dear,' Eleanor said, 'you can't expect a marriage to remain as it is in the beginning. If your souls continued to burn for each other in that way, you would be cinders.' 'Then what is the point? Why do we marry for life, only to see love fade away?' 'Ah, but true love doesn't fade away. It changes, deepens. It seems to disappear at times, only to come back in a different way. Think of early love like a wave in the ocean, building and building until it tumbles from its own height. Then the calm, the drawing back, only to swell and crash again. When you get past the breakers, you don't feel the crash, but the water is still lifting and falling in life's rhythm.' ...I adjusted my hat to better shield my eyes from the blinding sun. 'It seems I pushed through the breakers only to find my husband wasn't with me on the other side.' 'Then you must swim until you find him.' Eleanor kicked seaweed from the path of sandpipers, skittering from approaching foam. 'Don't be tempted back into the breakers, seeking another for the journey. You may find the ocean spits you back out.

You have exciting eyes,Becca. Too dark to read, which cloaks you in mystery. Pink would offset that, don't you think?" How was she supposed to think a'tall?! Her pulse was racing out of control. She could even feel him pushing himself against her hips! "If we really were alone right now, I think I'd have to lift your skirt." Whispered in his low,masculine voice near her ear, the outrageous remark made her draw in her breath so sharply she almost choked. It completely saved her and brought her to her sense.He'd stepped back as she coughed. She swung around, glaring at him, and was met with a cheeky grin. "Will you throw yarn at me if I kiss you again?" he asked with a twinkle in his pale blue eyes.

She is putting on airs already," said Laurie, who regarded the idea in the light of a capital joke. "But may I inquire how you intend to support the establishment? If all the pupils are little ragamuffins, I'm afraid your crop won't be profitable in a worldly sense, Mrs. Bhaer." "Now don't be a wet-blanket, Teddy. Of course I shall have rich pupils, also—perhaps begin with such altogether. Then, when I've got a start, I can take in a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. Rich people's children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. I've seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones pushed forward, when it's real cruelty. Some are naughty through mismanagment or neglect, and some lose their mothers. Besides, the best have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that's the very time they need most patience and kindness. People laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn all at once from pretty children into fine young men. They don't complain much—plucky little souls—but they feel it. I've been through something of it, and I know all about it. I've a special interest in such young bears, and like to show them that I see the warm, honest, well-meaning boys' hearts, in spite of the clumsy arms and legs and the topsy-turvy heads. I've had experience, too, for haven't I brought up one boy to be a pride and honor to his family?" "I'll testify that you tried to do it," said Laurie with a grateful look. "And

After that, we don't talk much until she brings out a ginger cake from the larder. "An old family recipe," she says. "I've been experimenting with the quantities of cloves and Jamaica ginger. Tell me what you think." And she pushes a slice toward me. I try not to gobble for it, for I am starving. "The most important thing with this cake is to beat in every ingredient, one by one, with the back of a wooden spoon," she says. "Simply throwing everything in together and then beating produces a most unsuccessful cake. I know because my first attempt was as heavy as a brick---quite indigestible!" She gives a rueful smile and asks if I think it needs more ginger. I feel the crumb, dense and dark, melt on my tongue. My mouth floods with warmth and spice and sweetness. As I swallow, something sharp and clean seems to lift through my nose and throat until my head swims. "I can see you like it." Miss Eliza watches me and smiles. And then I blurt something out. Something I know Reverend Thorpe and his wife would not like. But it's too late, the words jump from my throat of their own accord. "I can taste an African heaven, a forest full of dark earth and heat." The smile on Miss Eliza's face stretches a little wider and her eyes grow brighter. And this gives me the courage to ask a question that's nothing to do with my work. "What is the flavor that cuts through it so keenly, so that it sings a high note on my tongue?" She stares at me with her forget-me-not eyes. "It's the lightly grated rinds of two fresh lemons!

a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 28 Instinctively, we protect our physical selves. We don’t let people touch us, push us around, control where we go. But when it comes to the mind, we’re less disciplined. We hand it over willingly to social media, to television, to what other people are doing, thinking, or saying. We sit down to work and the next thing you know, we’re browsing the Internet. We sit down with our families, but within minutes we have our phones out. We sit down peacefully in a park, but instead of looking inward, we’re judging people as they pass by.

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed.

What could happen if we changed our emphasis from push to pull? What if much more of the $143 billion spent on official development assistance in 2016 was channeled to support direct market-creation efforts in poor countries, even when the circumstances seemed unlikely? Imagine how many markets could be created; imagine how many Tolarams, Nollywoods, M-PESAs, and other new-market creators could emerge; imagine how many jobs could be created. As I think about this problem, I can’t help but wonder how many fathers and mothers would be afforded the dignity of work and the resources to provide simple things for their families—like food, health care, and quality education. Imagine how many people would have a renewed sense of hope and purpose when they begin to see their suffering can become a thing of the past.

As we prepared for sleep that night I noticed that Lisa was staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked as young now as the day I met her, no grey upon her jet black hair, face always pale, she rarely sun bathed, dark glittering eyes and finally pearly white teeth. What a woman, always passionate about her affairs and always interested in my work. Shame her family could not attend our wedding. I suppose that is the hazard of marrying a Slav, either the family is dead, scattered or too poor to fly to England. Still it was a happy wedding, a quiet one with a few friends from work. Lisa crawled into bed beside me; her body, always cold, quickly warmed to my touch. Why are women always cold when they first get into bed? We kissed for what seemed an age, caressing each other’s bodies until at last she pushed me onto my back, straddled me and smiled looking down into my eyes. She licked her lips and slowly leant forward. The next morning I checked my neck for any tell-tale signs of our love making. Again Lisa had bitten every inch of my body and left not a mark. I smiled down at her sleeping form, kissed her cheek and went to my study. I had term papers to mark and research for my next set of lectures. Lisa came into my study just after lunch. For a woman just out of bed she looked remarkably well, her hair was untangled, her cheeks full in bloom, there were no signs of tiredness in her eyes at all. I smiled at her as we kissed, then she told me of the theme for the dinner party. Eleven guests as usual and each one would have to be very special. I left her to set up the invitations and planning. This was going to be the Last supper revisited it seemed.

lake level: 4204.75' What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breathe. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.

The fire started inside a barn. It was tiny at first, a glowing dot, some wisps of white smoke. But then flames reached up. They grabbed hold of a pile of hay. Crackle! Pop! And then, Boom! Towers of flame shot up, higher, higher, punching through the roof, reaching for the sky. Voices screamed out. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Alarm bells clanged. Firefighters readied their horses and raced their pumpers through the streets. But it was too late. The flames blasted a shower of fiery sparks into the windy sky. Like a swarm of flaming wasps, they flew through the air, starting fires wherever they landed. Shops and homes erupted in flames. Warehouses exploded. Mansions burned. Crowds of panicked people fled their houses and rushed through the streets and along the wooden sidewalks. They screamed and pushed and knocked one another down, desperate to get away from the choking smoke and broiling flames. But there was no escape. The winds blew harder. Flames shot hundreds of feet in the air, spreading across miles and miles. And in the middle of it all was eleven-year-old Oscar Starling. Oscar had never felt so terrified, not even two years ago, when a killer blizzard hit his family’s Minnesota farm. He was trapped inside a burning house, fighting for his life. He’d made it down the stairs, desperate to escape. And then, Crash! A ball of fire and cinders crashed through the window, and the house exploded in flames. And suddenly, Oscar was in the fire’s ferocious grip. The flames clawed at him, seared him, threw him to the ground. Smoke gushed up his nose and into his mouth. But the worst was the blistering heat, the feeling of being roasted alive. Was this the end? Oscar had never wanted to come to this city. And now he was sure he was going to die here.

Mr. Sturgess ran the classes with iron, ex-military discipline. We each had spots on the floor, denoting where we should stand rigidly to attention, awaiting our next task. And he pushed us hard. It felt like Mr. Sturgess had forgotten that we were only age six--but as kids, we loved it. It made us feel special. We would line up in rows beneath a metal bar, some seven feet off the ground, then one by one we would say: “Up, please, Mr. Sturgess,” and he would lift us up and leave us hanging, as he continued down the line. The rules were simple: you were not allowed to ask permission to drop off until the whole row was up and hanging, like dead pheasants in a game larder. And even then you had to request: “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess.” If you buckled and dropped off prematurely, you were sent back in shame to your spot. I found I loved these sessions and took great pride in determining to be the last man hanging. Mum would say that she couldn’t bear to watch as my little skinny body hung there, my face purple and contorted in blind determination to stick it out until the bitter end. One by one the other boys would drop off the bar, and I would be left hanging there, battling to endure until the point where even Mr. Sturgess would decide it was time to call it. I would then scuttle back to my mark, grinning from ear to ear. “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess,” became a family phrase for us, as an example of hard physical exercise, strict discipline, and foolhardy determination. All of which would serve me well in later military days. So my training was pretty well rounded. Climbing. Hanging. Escaping. I loved them all. Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist, and an assassin. I took it as a great compliment.

Too often, out of the best of intentions, we do the very thing guaranteed to make matters worse: We hector, lecture, bully, plead, or threaten. Anthony Pratkanis, a social psychologist who investigated how scammers prey on old people, collected heartbreaking stories of family members pleading with relatives who had been defrauded: “Can’t you see the guy is a thief and the offer is a scam? You’re being ripped off!” “Ironically, this natural tendency to lecture may be one of the worst things a family member or friend can do,” Pratkanis says. “A lecture just makes the victim feel more defensive and pushes him or her further into the clutches of the fraud criminal.” Anyone who understands dissonance knows why. Shouting “What were you thinking?” will backfire because it means “Boy, are you stupid.” Such accusations cause already embarrassed victims to withdraw further into themselves and clam up, refusing to tell anyone what they are doing.

When our society lost this communal network, many aspects of our culture died, including the fact that we lost contact with older family members who could give us perspective on our lives. Without that perspective, we’ve become overscheduled, hyperstimulated, and culturally grumpy. We are so burdened by the pace of our lives that when we must interact with older people who cannot keep up, we run out of patience trying to fit them into our schedules. We have forgotten—or never learned—how to value our senior adults’ advice. As they begin to slow down, we push them aside so they don’t impede our progress. While we may accomplish a lot every day, we don’t necessarily feel good about our achievements because no one is there to tell us about the longer-term implications of choices we make. Many of us assume some things about senior adults that aren’t true, and then can’t understand why we aren’t getting along better with this aging population.

I didn’t know my dad in person and I never got to say goodbye to him at his funeral and I thought it would be nice to say a few words now that I sort of feel I know him a bit better.’ She gave a nervous smile, and pushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘So. Will … Dad. When I first found out you were my real father, I’ll be honest, I was a bit freaked out. I’d hoped my real dad was going to be this wise, handsome man, who would want to teach me stuff and protect me and take me on trips to show me amazing places that he loved. And what I actually got was an angry man in a wheelchair who just, you know, killed himself. But because of Lou, and your family, over the last few months I’ve come to understand you a bit better. ‘I’ll always be sad and maybe even a bit angry that I never got to meet you, but now I want to say thank you too. “. You gave me a lot, without knowing it. I think I’m like you in good ways – and probably a few not-so-good ways. You gave me blue eyes and my hair colour and the fact that I think Marmite is revolting and the ability to do black ski runs and … Well, apparently you also gave me a certain amount of moodiness – that’s other people’s opinion, by the way. Not mine.’ ‘But mostly you gave me a family I didn’t know I had. And that’s cool. Because, to be honest, it wasn’t going that well before they all turned up.’ Her smile wavered. ‘ So, um, Will … Dad, I’m not going to go on and on because speeches are boring and also that baby is going to start wailing any minute, which will totally harsh the mood. But I just wanted to say thank you, from your daughter, and that I … love you and I’ll always miss you, and I hope if you’re looking down, and you can see me, you’re glad. That I exist. Because me being here sort of means you’re still here, doesn’t it?’ Lily’s voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears. Her gaze slid towards Camilla, who gave a small nod.

Dad denies ever physically abusing anyone, including Mom. I suspect that they were physically abusive to each other in the way that Mom and most of her men were: a bit of pushing, some plate throwing, but nothing more. What I do know is that between the end of his marriage with Mom and the beginning of his marriage with Cheryl--which occurred when I was four--Dad had changed for the better. He credits a more serious involvement with his faith. In this, Dad embodied a phenomenon social scientists have observed for decades: Religious folks are much happier. Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don't attend church at all. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber even found that the relationship was causal: It's not just that people who happen to live successful lives also go to church, it's that church seems to promote good habits.

Snow pressed herself against the cool wall to make sure he didn't see her. When he was out of sight, she peeked again to look at the guard. He was young and very thin. Not much older than she. And he had a family he was feeding on meals that weren't arriving. She looked down at the warm bread and fruit on her breakfast tray. Her belly was still full from the night before. She could make it until dinner without anything more. Looking both ways to make sure the hall was clear before stepping out of the shadows, Snow walked swiftly toward the guard, her eyes cast downward. The guard looked surprised when she placed her tray at his feet. "Your Highness," he said, struggling for words. "But that's your meal." Snow was too shy to speak. Instead, she waved the food away and pushed the tray closer to his boots. With a small nod and smile, she hurried back to the safety of her chambers before anyone could see them conversing and tell the queen, but not before she heard him speak softly. "Thank you, kind princess. Thank you.

Liberals stand up for victims of oppression and exclusion. They fight to break down arbitrary barriers (such as those based on race, and more recently on sexual orientation). But their zeal to help victims, combined with their low scores on the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, often lead them to push for changes that weaken groups, traditions, institutions, and moral capital. For example, the urge to help the inner-city poor led to welfare programs in the 1960s that reduced the value of marriage, increased out-of-wedlock births, and weakened African American families.72 The urge to empower students by giving them the right to sue their teachers and schools in the 1970s has eroded authority and moral capital in schools, creating disorderly environments that harm the poor above all.73 The urge to help Hispanic immigrants in the 1980s led to multicultural education programs that emphasized the differences among Americans rather than their shared values and identity. Emphasizing differences makes many people more racist, not less.

Rhys looked them each in the eye, even my sisters, his hand brushing the back of my own. 'Do you want the inspiring talk or the bleak one?' he asked. 'We want the real one,' Amren said. Rhys pushed his shoulders back, elegantly folding his wings behind him. 'I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, of the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn't... I might have become as awful as the price we're going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training,' he said to Cassian, 'I would not have known the true depth of strength, of resilience, of honour and loyalty.' Cassian's eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, 'If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.' Azriel bowed his head in thanks. Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. 'If I had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.' She wiped away her tears as she nodded. I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting. Rhys bowed his head to her. 'If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake...' A quiet laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. 'My own power would have consumed me long ago.' Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. 'And if I had not met my mate...' His words failed him as silver lined his eyes. He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have... The wait was worth it. He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. 'I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to... so I could find you.' He kissed another tear away. And then he said to my sisters, 'We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we'll find out why.' He surveyed them all again- and held out his hand to Cassian. Cassian took it, and held out his other for Mor. Then Mor extended her other to Azriel. Azriel to Amren. Amren to Nesta. Nesta to Elain. And Elain to me. Until we were all linked, all bound together. Rhys said, 'We will walk out onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today...' His chin lifted. 'The great joy and honour of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful- more than I can possibly say- that I was given this time with you all.' 'We are grateful, Rhysand,' Amren said quietly. 'More than you know.' Rhys gave her a small smile as the others murmured their agreement. He squeezed my hand again as he said, 'Then let's go make Hybern very ungrateful to have known us, too.

There was a scuffling and a great thump: Someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen. He pulled himself up on the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed glasses, and said, “Am I too late? Has it started? I only just found out, so I--I--” Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family. There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension, “So--’ow eez leetle Teddy?” Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be solidifying, like ice. “I--oh yes--he’s fine!” Lupin said loudly. “Yes, Tonks is with him--at her mother’s--” Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen. “Here, I’ve got a picture!” Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry, who saw a tiny baby with a tuft of bright turquoise hair, waving fat fists at the camera. “I was a fool!” Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph. “I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a--a--” “Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron,” said Fred. Percy swallowed. “Yes, I was!” “Well, you can’t say fairer than that,” said Fred, holding out his hand to Percy. Mrs. Weasley burst into tears. She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father. “I’m sorry, Dad,” Percy said. Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son. “What made you see sense, Perce?” inquired George. “It’s been coming on for a while,” said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses with a corner of his traveling cloak. “But I had to find a way out and it’s not so easy at the Ministry, they’re imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight of it, so here I am.” “Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these,” said George in a good imitation of Percy’s most pompous manner. “Now let’s get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters’ll be taken.

You’re the only person who doesn’t see the advantage in such a match.” “That’s because I don’t believe in marriages of convenience. Given your family’s history, I’d think that you wouldn’t either.” She colored. “And why do assume it would be such a thing? Is it so hard to believe that a man might genuinely care for me? That he might actually want to marry me for myself?” “Why would anyone wish to marry the reckless Lady Celia, after all,” she went on in a choked voice, “if not for her fortune or to shore up his reputation?” “I didn’t mean any such thing,” he said sharply. But she’d worked herself up into a fine temper. “Of course you did. You kissed me last night only to make a point, and you couldn’t even bear to kiss me properly again today-“ “Now see here,” he said, grabbing her shoulders. “I didn’t kiss you ‘properly’ today because I was afraid if I did I might not stop.” That seemed to draw her up short. “Wh-What?” Sweet God, he shouldn’t have said that, but he couldn’t let her go on thinking she was some sort of pariah around men. “I knew that if I got his close, and I put my mouth on yours…” But now he was this close. And she was staring up at him with that mix of bewilderment and hurt pride, and he couldn’t help himself. Not anymore. He kissed her, to show her what she seemed blind to. That he wanted her. That even knowing it was wrong and could never work, he wanted to have her. She tore her lips from his. “Mr. Pinter-“ she began in a whisper. “Jackson,” he growled. “Let me hear you say my name.” Backing away from him, she cast him a wounded expression. “Y-you don’t have to pretend-“ “I’m not pretending anything, damn it!” Grabbing her by the sleeves, he dragged her close and kissed her again, with even more heat. How could she not see that he ached to take her? How could she not know what a temptation she was? Her lips intoxicated him, made him light-headed. Made him reckless enough to kiss her so impudently that any other woman of her rank would be insulted. When she pulled away a second time, he expected her to slap him. But all she did was utter a feeble protest. “Please, Mr. Pinter-“ “Jackson,” he ordered in a low, unsteady voice, emboldened by the melting look in her eyes. “Say my Christian name.” Her lush dark lashes lowered as a blush stained her cheeks. “Jackson…” His breath caught in his throat at the intimacy of it, and fire exploded in his brain. She wasn’t pushing him away, so to hell with trying to be a gentleman. He took her mouth savagely this time, plundering every part of its silky warmth as his blood pulsed high in his veins. She tasted of red wine and lemon cake, both tart and sweet at once. He wanted to eat her up. He wanted to take her, right here in this room. So when she pulled out of his arms to back away, he walked after her. She didn’t stop backing away, but neither did she turn tail and run. “Last night you claimed this wouldn’t happen again.” “I know. And yet it has.” Like someone in an opium den, he’d been craving her for months. And how that he’d suddenly had a taste of the very thing he craved, he had to have more. When she came up against the writing table, he caught her about the waist. She turned her head away before he could kiss her, so he settled for burying his face in her neck to nuzzle the tender throat he’d been coveting. With a shiver, she slid her hands up his chest. “Why are you doing this?” “Because I want you,” he admitted, damning himself. “Because I’ve always wanted you.” Then he covered her mouth with his once more.

I want you to want something for once. Something that nobody told you to want. I want. I do. Want things. Like what princess? I want something that will make this all worth it; I want the good stuff. I’m ready for the goddamn silver lining. I want to have sisters who live down the street, I want a family; I want a mother to call when I need to know the right temperature to cook a goddamn chicken. I want Sunday suppers and summer barbecues at lake houses. I want to stop second-guessing every tiny detail of every single day, every word that comes out of my mouth. I want to be brave. I want to jump without looking down all the time. I want to be able to watch a TV show without seeing things that remind me about my sisters, about the could-have-been family. I want us to push tables together in restaurants so we all fit, I want to fill benches and rows of bleachers with us, I want the world to make room. I want to laugh too loud and make people wish they were us. I want them to feel it. Those perfect families, those perfect packages, those smug titles for everyone- mother father sister brother, step-this and half-that. They all have words for what they are. And we don’t. I want that.

Thank you for the advice, but I know how to comport myself with Maria.” “That remains to be seen.” Jarret rose, then bent to plant his hands on the desk. “But know this-none of us will stand by and let you ruin a young woman just to provoke Gran.” Oliver shot to his feet. That his brother thought him capable of such a thing infuriated him, as did being lectured by him. It had never happened before, and he wasn’t about to allow it now. Leaning forward until he and Jarret were eye to eye over the desk, he growled, “And what the deuce do you think you can do to stop me from acting as I please?” A grim smile touched Jarret’s lips. “I could attempt to steal her from you.” Somewhere in the recesses of his sanity, Oliver knew he was being baited, yet it made no difference. Just the idea of Jarret seeking to engage Maria’s affections crushed his usual control. “If you lay a hand on her,” he ground out, “Gabe won’t be the only one wearing a sling in this family.” With an enigmatic look, Jarret pushed back from the desk. “Fine.” His eyes turned to ice. “But be warned-the rest of us intend to make sure that you never lay a hand on her, either.” Without waiting for a response, he strode from the room.

Tamlin- Tamlin, I can't... I can't live my life with guards around me day and night. I can't live like that... suffocation. Just let me help you- let me work with you.' 'You've given enough, Feyre.' 'I know. But...' I faced him. Met his stare- the full power of the High Lord of the Spring Court. 'I'm harder to kill now. I'm faster, stronger-' 'My family were faster and stronger than you. And they were murdered quite easily.' 'Then marry someone who can put up with this.' He blinked. Slowly. Then he said with terrible softness. 'Do you not want to marry me, then?' I tried not to look at the ring on my finger, at the emerald. 'Of course I do. Of course I do.' My voice broke. 'But you... Tamlin...' The walls pushed in on me. The quiet, the guards, the stares. What I'd seen at the Tithe today. 'I'm drowning,' I managed to say. 'I am drowning. And the more you do this, the more guards... You might as well be shoving my head under the water.' Nothing in those eyes, that face. But then- I cried out, instinct taking over as his power blasted through the room. The windows shattered. The furniture splintered. And that box of paints and brushes and paper... It exploded into dust and glass and wood.

On a global scale, the international diaspora of Filipinos must be seen in the context of our search for a home. For many, the economic conditions of the Philippines can hardly be called home—pushing hundreds of thousands of men and women (primarily) to seek economic relief elsewhere in order to provide a home for the families they left behind in the Philippines. This diaspora must also be seen in the historical context of our imbalance as a result of colonialism/imperialism and the displacement of the self through negation by the master’s narratives. That this diaspora is perceived by the Philippine government as its own version of “foreign aid” is symptomatic of a consciousness that remains uncritical of its marginal situatedness. The paradox of the “colonized taking care of the colonizer” is being played out in hospitals and convalescent homes, where Filipino nurses abound; in Europe and in the United States, where Filipino nannies and domestic workers are taking care of other people’s children It is evident in Japan’s Filipino entertainers and in Denmark and Australia’s Filipino mail-order brides, who provide caretaking services, especially to men. This is the most stark and depressing legacy of colonization as a patriarchal legacy—the exploitation of women

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the surrogate father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife and said, "I'm off. The man should be here soon" Half an hour later, just by chance a door-to-door baby photographer rang the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. "Good morning, madam. I've come to...." "Oh, no need to explain. I've been expecting you," Mrs. Smith cut in. "Really?" the photographer asked. "Well, good. I've made a specialty of babies" "That's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat" After a moment, she asked, blushing, "Well, where do we start?" "Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch and perhaps a couple on the bed. Sometimes the living room floor is fun too; you can really spread out!" "Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work for Harry and me" "Well, madam, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But, if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven different angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results" "My, that's a lot of....." gasped Mrs. Smith. "Madam, in my line of work, a man must take his time. I'd love to be in and out in five minutes, but you'd be disappointed with that, I'm sure"  "Don't I know it," Mrs. Smith said quietly. The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. "This was done on the top of a bus in downtown London" "Oh my God!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed, tugging at her handkerchief. "And these twins turned out exceptionally well, when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with" "She was difficult?" asked Mrs. Smith. "Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to Hyde Park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep, pushing to get a good look" "Four and five deep?" asked Mrs. Smith, eyes widened in amazement. "Yes," the photographer said, "And for more than three hours too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling. I could hardly concentrate. Then darkness approached and I began to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just packed it all in." Mrs. Smith leaned forward. "You mean squirrels actually chewed on your, um......equipment?" "That's right. Well, madam, if you're ready, I'll set up my tripod so we  can get to work." "Tripod?????" "Oh yes, I have to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big for me to hold for very long. Madam? Madam? ....... Good Lord, she's fainted!!

If you’re going to give me the third degree,” she tells him, “let’s get it over with. Best to withhold food or water; water is probably best. I’ll get thirsty before I get hungry.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Do you really think I’m like that? Why would you think that?” “I was taken by force, and you’re keeping me here against my will,” she says, leaning across the table toward him. She considers spitting in his face, but decides to save that gesture as punctuation for a more appropriate moment. “Imprisonment is still imprisonment, no matter how many layers of cotton you wrap it in.” That makes him lean farther away, and she knows she’s pushed a button. She remembers seeing those pictures of him back when he was all over the news, wrapped in cotton and kept in a bombproof cell. “I really don’t get you,” he says, a bit of anger in his voice this time. “We saved your life. You could at least be a little grateful.” “You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That’s not salvation, that’s damnation.” “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Now it’s her turn to get angry. “Yes, you’re sorry I feel that way, everyone’s sorry I feel that way. Are you going to keep this up until I don’t feel that way anymore?” He stands up suddenly, pushing his chair back, and paces, fern leaves brushing his clothes. She knows she’s gotten to him. He seems like he’s about to storm out, but instead takes a deep breath and turns back to her. “I know what you’re going through,” he says. “I was brainwashed by my family to actually want to be unwound—and not just by my family, but by my friends, my church, everyone I looked up to. The only voice who spoke sense was my brother Marcus, but I was too blind to hear him until the day I got kidnapped.” “You mean see,” she says, putting a nice speed bump in his way. “Huh?” “Too blind to see him, too deaf to hear him. Get your senses straight. Or maybe you can’t, because you’re senseless.” He smiles. “You’re good.” “And anyway, I don’t need to hear your life story. I already know it. You got caught in a freeway pileup, and the Akron AWOL used you as a human shield—very noble. Then he turned you, like cheese gone bad.” “He didn’t turn me. It was getting away from my tithing, and seeing unwinding for what it is. That’s what turned me.” “Because being a murderer is better than being a tithe, isn’t that right, clapper?” He sits back down again, calmer, and it frustrates her that he is becoming immune to her snipes. “When you live a life without questions, you’re unprepared for the questions when they come,” he says. “You get angry and you totally lack the skills to deal with the anger. So yes, I became a clapper, but only because I was too innocent to know how guilty I was becoming.” ... “You think I’m like you, but I’m not,” Miracolina says. “I’m not part of a religious order that tithes. My parents did it in spite of our beliefs, not because of ii.” “But you were still raised to believe it was your purpose, weren’t you?” “My purpose was to save my brother’s life by being a marrow donor, so my purpose was served before I was six months old.” “And doesn’t that make you angry that the only reason you’re here was to help someone else?” “Not at all,” she says a little too quickly. She purses her lips and leans back in her chair, squirming a bit. The chair feels a little too hard beneath her. “All right, so maybe I do feel angry once in a while, but I understand why they did it. If I were them, I would have done the same thing.” “Agreed,” he says. “But once your purpose was served, shouldn’t your life be your own?” “Miracles are the property of God,” she answers. “No,” he says, “miracles are gifts from God. To calthem his property insults the spirit in which they are given.” She opens her mouth to reply but finds she has no response, because he’s right. Damn him for being right—nothing about him should be right! “We’ll talk again when you’re over yourself,” he says.

March 8th DON’T UNINTENTIONALLY HAND OVER YOUR FREEDOM “If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 28 Instinctively, we protect our physical selves. We don’t let people touch us, push us around, control where we go. But when it comes to the mind, we’re less disciplined. We hand it over willingly to social media, to television, to what other people are doing, thinking, or saying. We sit down to work and the next thing you know, we’re browsing the Internet. We sit down with our families, but within minutes we have our phones out. We sit down peacefully in a park, but instead of looking inward, we’re judging people as they pass by. We don’t even know that we’re doing this. We don’t realize how much waste is in it, how inefficient and distracted it makes us. And what’s worse—no one is making this happen. It’s totally self-inflicted. To the Stoics, this is an abomination. They know that the world can control our bodies—we can be thrown in jail or be tossed about by the weather. But the mind? That’s ours. We must protect it. Maintain control over your mind and perceptions, they’d say. It’s your most prized possession.

Liberals stand up for victims of oppression and exclusion. They fight to break down arbitrary barriers (such as those based on race, and more recently on sexual orientation). But their zeal to help victims, combined with their low scores on the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, often lead them to push for changes that weaken groups, traditions, institutions, and moral capital. For example, the urge to help the inner-city poor led to welfare programs in the 1960s that reduced the value of marriage, increased out-of-wedlock births, and weakened African American families.72 The urge to empower students by giving them the right to sue their teachers and schools in the 1970s has eroded authority and moral capital in schools, creating disorderly environments that harm the poor above all.73 The urge to help Hispanic immigrants in the 1980s led to multicultural education programs that emphasized the differences among Americans rather than their shared values and identity. Emphasizing differences makes many people more racist, not less.74 On issue after issue, it’s as though liberals are trying to help a subset of bees (which really does need help) even if doing so damages the hive. Such “reforms” may lower the overall welfare of a society, and sometimes they even hurt the very victims liberals were trying to help.

LEADING LESSONS Rejection is an illusion. It’s all in your head. It was never about Rachael; it was always about me. So maybe I didn’t fit her picture of the perfect dance partner. We were no longer a match--so what? At the time, the rejection hurt like hell and I threw myself a big ol’ pity party. But here’s the thing: No one can reject you. No one can dump you. It’s just a decision, and maybe you don’t like it. I was the one believing I was a victim instead of realizing how blessed my life was. If you’re feeling rejected, you’re looking at things all wrong. Just because someone says no, just because someone chooses another person over you, doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. There isn’t one successful person out there who hasn’t racked up his or her share of rejection. That said, no one likes hearing no. But what are you going to do with that no? Are you going to let it destroy your self-esteem? Or are you going to keep pushing forward, following your passion? Dancers deal with a lot of rejection--I know this now, and I see the rejections as part of my journey. Keep doing what you’re doing and do it well--don’t worry about pleasing anyone but yourself. Sometimes that no can be a wake-up call, a chance for you to reassess, refocus, reboot. I’m grateful Rachael and her family gave me my walking papers. That rejection opened me up to so much more.

Another morning Diana and I sat together on the window seat in our second-floor living room, looking out at a chilly, gray November day. She cleared her throat gently and asked, “Mrs. Robertson, I wonder if I might ask your advice on something, since you’re so much . . . er, older and . . . wiser, I mean.” She said that her grandmother had suggested to Diana that she seek help from Buckingham Palace in dealing with the press. Diana did not tell me that her grandmother was Lady Ruth Fermoy, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. Diana wanted to use our telephone to discuss this further with her grandmother. In the meantime, “Do you think I should ask Charles for help, Mrs. Robertson?” She was quite calm and in control; she simply wanted another opinion. I thought for a minute, then told her, “I wouldn’t ask for help if I could possibly manage without it. If the palace thinks you can’t handle the pressure now, they might think you couldn’t handle it once you’re part of the royal family. If you’re serious about this romance, you should try to struggle along on your own.” That conversation took place in early November on the day that the photograph of Diana pushing Patrick up the mews in his stroller was taken. It is my favorite photograph of the two of them because it reminds me of the trust she demonstrated that day. I clearly recall thinking at that point, “This child needs a mother for guidance.

Someone must be having a big party, Shyla thought as she turned into her neighborhood, the rhythmic salsa beat of Latin music was so loud. A car she didn't recognize was parked in the middle of her driveway. She had to drive over the grass in order to get around it. She pushed the automatic opener to raise the garage door. Another car was parked where she normally parked, and it wasn't Carl's. It belonged to Pilar. Leaving her car where it was, she got out and went into the house through the back door from the garage. Inside the house, the noise was almost deafening. Two young children were thrashing one another in the middle of the family room while some woman, presumably their mother, yelled at them in Spanish. The woman barely noticed Shyla. Shyla went into the living room and could hear other voices and laughter coming from her bedroom. There, she found a young woman going through her jewelry box, and someone else holding up one of her bras. When they saw Shyla, they stopped laughing. Pilar and another elderly woman were just coming down the stairs when Shyla went back into the living room. "Shyla, why are you home?" Pilar asked, then shrugged. Shyla could hardly hear her over the noise. "I live here," she said, too stunned to say anything else. She went back into the family room and turned off the compact disc player. There, on the floor, lay her great grandmother's china clock, broken.

(...) What the Industrial Revolution did for the first time was allow women an independent source of income. They didn't have to go from their father's house immediately into the house of their husband, and then for the rest of their lives remain under the thumb of their husband regardless of how he chose to behave and conduct himself for the years to come. Women could go out and work in a factory, and that was experienced as an enormous liberation by women. To take the example of America, there were the textile factories of New England, the cigarette factories of the Carolinas and Virginia, and so on. Afterwards, when the telephone came in, there were hundreds of thousands of female telephone operators. This was a liberation from the psychological cage that very often the husband-dominated family was. She was bringing in her own income, so she had a certain place in the family for that reason. Or, if it came to that, "to hell with the louse," and she could go out and make a living on her own. We see this in third world countries as well. The factory system and the other accoutrements of industrial capitalism were a liberation for women. This explains why legislation to limit the work of women and exclude women from certain occupations, or limit the hours women could work, and so on, were pushed not by women's groups but by the male-dominated labor unions. It was to do away with the increasing competition that women presented to male union labor.

Lord Gareth?" He froze. It was she, staring out at him with an expression of astounded disbelief on her lovely face. Gareth was caught totally unprepared. He knew he must look like an arse because he certainly felt like one. But the comic ridiculousness of the situation suddenly hit him, and his lips began twitching uncontrollably. He gazed up at her with perfect innocence. "Hello, Juliet." A chorus of out-of-tune voices came up from below. "Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" Gareth flung his crop down at their heads. Cokeham let out a yelp, then fell to laughing. The girl's smooth, high brow pleated in a frown as she took in the scene. Perry down there with the horses. The other Den of Debauchery members all gathered below, beaming stupidly up at her. And Gareth, grinning, sprawled full-length along a tree branch just outside her window. "Just what on earth are you doing, Lord Gareth?" The way she said it made his cheeks warm with embarrassment. So he was a pillock. Who cared? Instead, he gave her his most devastating grin and said with cheerful earnestness, "Why, I have come to rescue you, of course." "Rescue me?" "Surely you didn't think I'd allow Lucien to banish you into obscurity, now, did you?" "Well, I —  The duke didn't ban—"  She gave a disbelieving little laugh and leaned out the window, grasping the blanket tightly at her breasts. Her hair, caught in a long, dark braid, swung tantalizingly out over her bosom. "Really, Lord Gareth. This is ... highly irregular!" "Yes, but the hour is late, and as it took me all day to find you, I was feeling rather impatient. I do hope you'll forgive me for resorting to such desperate measures. May I come in and talk?" "Of course not! I — I cannot have a man in my bedroom!" "Why not, my sweet?" He pushed aside a small, leafy twig in order to see her better and grinned cajolingly up at her. "I had you in mine." She shook her head, torn between what she wanted to do — and what she ought to do. "Really, Lord Gareth ... your brother will never approve of this. You should go home. After all, you're the son of a duke and I'm just a — " " — beautiful young woman with nowhere else to go. A beautiful young woman who should be a part of my family. Now, do collect Charlotte and your things, Miss Paige — I fear we must make haste, if we are to marry before Lucien catches up to us." "Marry?!" she cried, forgetting to whisper. He gazed at her in blank, perfect innocence. "Well, yes, of course," he said, clinging to the branch as it dropped another few inches. "Surely you don't think I'd be hanging out of a tree for anything less, do you?" "But —" "Come now."  He smiled disarmingly. "Surely, you must see there is really no other option for you. And I won't have my niece growing up without a father. What kind of a man do you think I am? Now, gather up Charlotte and get your things, my dear Miss Paige, and come outside. I am growing most uncomfortable." Juliet

Of course, she didn’t remember them; she’d never been introduced to them. Only knew them as Tallskinnyblonde and the rest. She felt like seaweed dragged on a line but managed to smile and say hello. This was the opportunity for which she’d waited. Here she was standing among the friends she wanted to join. Her mind fought for words, something clever to say that might interest them. Finally, two of them greeted her coolly and turned abruptly away, the others following quickly like a school of minnows finning down the street. “Well, so here we are,” Chase said. “I don’t want to interrupt anything. I’ve just come for supplies, then back home.” “You’re not interrupting. I just ran into them. I’ll be out on Sunday, like I said.” Chase shifted his feet, fingered the shell necklace. “I’ll see you then,” she said, but he’d already turned to catch the others. She hurried toward the market, stepping around a family of mallard ducks waddling down Main Street, their bright feet surprisingly orange against the dull pavement. In the Piggly Wiggly, pushing the vision of Chase and the girl from her head, she rounded the end of the bread aisle and saw the truant lady, Mrs. Culpepper, only four feet away. They stood there like a rabbit and a coyote caught together in a yard fence. Kya was now taller than the woman and much more educated, though neither would have thought of that. After all the running, she wanted to bolt, but stood her ground and returned Mrs. Culpepper’s stare. The woman nodded slightly, then moved on.

Monday, January 26 Be Strong and Courageous “So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them! For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.” DEUTERONOMY 31:6 NLT In The Horse and His Boy, one of the books in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, we see a beautiful picture of how the Lord gives us strength and courage to do His will. The boy, Shasta, runs away from home. Along the way he meets up with a talking horse from Narnia and a nobly born girl, Aravis, with her talking horse. They decide to take their horses to Narnia, but their plans fall apart when they have to go through the Calormene capitol city, Tashbaan. Several times as they travel, they are chased by lions, harassed by cats, and generally persecuted by various members of the cat family. Finally, on one particularly dark night, Shasta crosses over a mountain pass alone. In the dark and fog Shasta senses rather than sees a creature walking along beside him. And he’s terrified. Later, when he meets Aslan, Shasta learns that all the cats were Aslan, guiding them, pushing them, and yes, terrifying them into doing what they needed to do. Aslan was also his protector as he crossed the steep and dangerous mountain pass in the dark. Shasta is angry until he realizes that Aslan did everything out of love, even hurting Aravis when her pride was keeping them from the mission they’d been given. Father, thank You for the beautiful picture of Your protection and courage to those who are Yours.

I couldn’t wait to follow through. I couldn’t wait to end this. “Your revenge?” Matthias laughed. “You’re revenge? What could you possibly do that would make any difference to me?” I looked up at Kane and he looked down at me. I smiled at him sweetly and he smiled back. I leaned in and he mirrored me. I tilted my face up to kiss him and he gladly reciprocated. Then I pulled back and swiveled my gaze to Matthias. “I will take your family away. Just like you took mine. I will pluck them from you one by one and make them suffer until they beg for death. Or, I will simply rescue them and give them a better life than you ever could.” Matthias barked out a louder laugh. “That’s sweet. It sounds like you’ve put thought into all that, but you can’t. It’s just not possible. “Sure it is,” I told him. “I’ve already gotten two of your children. Tyler isn’t here.” I gestured at Tyler. “Tyler will never be here. Unless you count that. Which being a self-respecting person, I wouldn’t. But who knows about you. And Miller isn’t here either. Miller is worse than Tyler. Look! You got Tyler to come to breakfast, but I seem to have forgotten Miller’s excuse. Could you remind me?” He stayed quiet. Which was a miracle in itself. So I continued, “I’m waiting for the right opportunity for Linley. I’ve been waiting for it for a while now. I’ve been watching her and watching her and just waiting. I cannot wait until I get her alone. I cannot wait until it’s just the two of us. It will be so fun. It’s what helps get me through these long days. Just thoughts of Linley. Just thoughts of what I will do to her and how slowly I will make those last painful moments last. And Kane? I could take him in a second. I could rip him out of your hands so fast you would blink and he would be gone. He might deny that if you ask him. But I know better. I hear everything else he says. I feel everything else he means. Kane is mine. You’re a smart man, Matthias, so don’t think for a second he isn’t. Right?” I turned to Kane. He leaned down again and kissed me. Point proved. I relaxed into Kane and let my threats soothe my soul and settle over the man I wanted to watch burn in hell. His reply was an arrogant smirk and hard eyes. “Little girl, you just asked for trouble, I’m-” “Do it,” I hissed. “Do whatever it is you want to do and see if I’m bluffing. Try me! Hurt someone I love. Hurt me. Take something away from me and see how painfully and how permanently I take something away from you.” I stood up and pushed aggressively away from the table. I stared him down the entire time. Kane let me go without even an attempt to restrain me. I was beyond that. I was beyond all of this. I was leaving. Today. Because without a doubt I would follow through with every single one of my threats. I stomped from the warehouse. I could feel Kane behind me, but he still didn’t try to slow me down. And I knew he wouldn’t. He really was mine. Matthias, Hendrix, nobody could take him from me. And he would do whatever I wanted as long as he thought we could survive. I hoped both of us could survive what I was about to ask him to do.

About the time Phil set out to film the first Duckmen of Louisiana video in 1987, there had been a really bad ice storm in West Monroe, which was kind of rare. It was so cold that a lot of the water on our property froze, so there was nowhere for the ducks to go. We climbed into our trucks and headed south to find the ducks. When we arrived at Lake Maurepas in South Louisiana, our guide took us to a hunting camp that was located about eight miles into the swamp. As we made our way to the camp near sunset, there were so many ducks flying overhead that duck feces started hitting the boat like it was a hailstorm--that’s what we call a poop storm! The sound of all those ducks was like a roar. The ice storm had pushed all the ducks south. It was the most ducks I’d ever seen. The next morning, we called in a group of about three thousand ducks! They funneled into our decoys like a cyclone. It took them over thirty minutes to land. Hundreds of ducks landed in front of us and swam to the edge of our hole, and then more would land in the vacated areas. We sat in stunned silence during the entire event. Finally, Phil whispered to us to be careful because we might kill more ducks than we needed with stray shot, since there were so many of them and they were so close together. My dad thought he saw a rare duck and without warning broke the silence with a gun blast. The roar of the ducks getting up was deafening. We only shot once per hunter and had our limit. It would have never happened if we hadn’t been completely concealed in our blind. It was one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen.

Kenilworth, Mountainside, Scotch Plains, Dunellen... they themselves seemed far from Jersey: names out of Waverley novels, promising vistas of castles, highland waterfalls, and meadows dotted with flocks of grazing sheep. But the signboards lied, the books had lied, the Times had lied; the land here was one vast and charmless suburb, and as the bus passed through it, speeding west across the state, Freirs saw before him only the flat grey monotony of highway, broken from time to time by gas stations, roadhouses, and shopping malls that stretched away like deserts. The bus was warm, and the ride was beginning to give him a headache. He could feel the backs of his thighs sweating through his chinos. Easing himself farther into the seat, he pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The scenery disappointed him, yet it was still an improvement over what they'd just come through. Back there, on the fringes of the city, every work of man seemed to have been given over to the automobile, in an endless line of showrooms and repair shops for mufflers, fenders, carburetors, ignitions, tires, brakes. Now at last he could make out hills in the distance and extended zones of green, though here and there the nearness of some larger town or development meant a length of highway lined by construction, billboards touting banks or amusement parks, and drive-in theaters, themselves immense blank billboards, their signs proclaiming horror movies, "family pictures," soft-core porn. A speedway announced that next Wednesday was ladies' night. Food stands offered pizzaburgers, chicken in the basket, fish 'n' chips.

As Christians, we celebrate many holidays and memorials throughout the year. Some we decide to celebrate by referencing events in the Bible. Others are related to events in our personal lives. Still more are pushed upon by this World. There's nothing necessarily wrong with celebrating events that bring us joy or keep important parts of our lives in focus. As a Christian, it is important for me to follow Christ's words and teachings. I do not obey man's intepretations of God's word. I read it and follow it. Its that simple. I dont need an interpreter. Christ is my intermediary. Ive been blessed to have been given the gift of language and... in the Bible, when you read it in Aramaic, there is only ONE event, one memorial that Jesus asks us to remember and thus honor our Savior. And its not His birthday. We are upon that annual event this weekend. For Jesus "blessed and he broke and he said, “Take eat; this is my body, which is broken for your persons; thus you shall do for my Memorial." [1 Cor 11:24] Holidays can be fun times for families to get together and to celebrate life. This weekend lets not lose focus. For this is the one and ONLY holiday that our Christ commands us to memorialize. Its in his words. Its in the Bible. It was important enough for Him to spell it out. It should be important enough for us to listen. Above all other events in our lives, isn't Christ Jesus's sacrifice truly the most magnificent one? Lets remember our Savior and not allow the World to mislead us into over prioritizing any other day than when -He gave His life for us. Truly His act was a gift to mankind that remains matchless.

I’ve been so mean to my body, outright hateful. I disparage her and call her names, I loathe parts of her and withhold care. I insist on physical standards she can never reach, for that is not how she is even made, but I detest her weakness for not pulling it off. I deny her things she loves depending on the current fad: bread, cheddar cheese, orange juice, baked potatoes. I push her too hard and refuse her enough rest. No matter what she accomplishes, I’m never happy with her. I’ve barely acknowledged her role in every precious experience of my life. I look at her with contempt. And yet every morning, no matter how terrible I have been to her, she gets us out of bed, nurtures the family, meets the needs of the day. She tells me when I am hungry or tired and sends special red-alert signals when I am overwhelmed or scared. She has safely gotten me to and from a thousand cities with fresh energy. She flushes with red wine, which she loves, which is pretty cute. She walked the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, the red dirt of Uganda, the steep opulence of Santorini, the ruins of Pompeii. She senses danger, trouble, land mines; she is never wrong. Every single time, she tells me when not to say something. She has cooked ten thousand meals. She prays without being told to; sometimes I realize she is whispering to God for us. She walks and cooks and lifts and hugs and types and drives and cleans and holds babies and rests and laughs and does everything in her power to live another meaningful, connected day on this earth. She sure does love me and my life and family. Maybe it is time to stop hating her and just love her back.

I was, however, still very much an emotional wreck and sometimes this resulted in misdirected anger. Unfortunately, my sisters bore the brunt of that. Sometimes I would just blow up without reason or warning. Once, my sister Sara was in the room and she was just moving things around, trying to clean up, and I blew up at her. She was so stunned and upset, she just walked out of the room and into the hallway to cry. Another soldier in a wheelchair came by and asked if she was okay. Through sobs and tears she choked out a “yeah.” “Did your soldier yell at you?” he asked. She nodded yes and he said, “I don’t know why we do that. But don’t take it personally. We’re all going through it.” She calmed down and walked back in. She stood squarely in front of my bed and told me that I really pissed her off. Clearly I’d already forgotten I yelled at her because I looked at her with a bewildered expression and managed to push out through my wired jaw, “What’s wrong with you?” She glared at me and spat back, “You son of a bitch, you’re what’s wrong!” I was clueless. In fact, I pissed off my family members on a pretty regular basis until they figured out how to deal with it. They’d just control when I got to talk. My jaw was wired shut, but I could talk a little bit with some help. I’d had a tracheotomy so I had a hole in my throat. I had this little purple plastic piece that I could put in the hole that would keep the air from coming out so I could talk. Every time I woke up, the purple plastic piece was clear across the room. They didn’t keep it near me. I had to put my fingers over the hole so I could wheeze out, “Gimme…gimme…the…thing.” I think this amused them.

As we were getting Mia’s things ready for her discharge, her nurse started to excuse herself to get a wheelchair to transport Mia to the car. Instantly, Mia said, “I’m not riding in a wheelchair.” “Yes, you are, Mia. It’s a hospital regulation,” I said, believing that was true. “Mom,” she protested, “they said I’m supposed to walk as much as possible. I’m walking to the car.” I saw a certain look in Mia’s eyes as she made this announcement, the look that says “I am going to push hard for this.” I knew she was determined, and I would fight a losing battle to try to talk her out of it. “I’m walking out of here,” she said again. I guess the medical staff noticed that look too because they allowed her to try to walk, with a nurse close beside her. Seeing that little girl limp her way down the hall, holding Reed’s hand, was one of the proudest moments of my life. I was absolutely amazed by her spunk and determination. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and snapped a picture. She is such a fighter, I thought as Jase and I followed her. Visually, she looked roughed up, as though she had been through about fifteen rounds in a boxing match. But in that moment, she showed a level of toughness and resilience I have never seen in a child. Remembering the information we were told on that first visit to ICI when Mia was seventeen days old, that she would need physical therapy to help her walk again after this surgery, I thanked God as I watched our daughter walk right out of the hospital twenty-four hours postoperation! When we got into the car, Jase asked Mia, “Well, what do you think about that?” “I’m a little tired, but I made it,” she replied. Indeed she did.

Back home, Chris struggled to readjust, physically and mentally. He also faced another decision-reenlist, or leave the Navy and start a new life in the civilian world. This time, he seemed to be leaning toward getting out-he'd been discussing other jobs and had already talked to people about what he might do next. It was his decision, one way or another. But if I’d been resigned to his reenlistment last go-around, this time I was far more determined to let him know I thought he should get out. There were two important reasons for him to leave-our children. They really needed to have him around as they grew. And I made that a big part of my argument. But the most urgent reason was Chris himself. I saw what the war was doing to him physically. His body was breaking down with multiple injuries, big and small. There were rings under his eyes even when he had slept. His blood pressure was through the roof. He had to wall himself off more and more. I didn’t think he could survive another deployment. “I’ll support you whatever you decide,” I told him. “I want to be married to you. But the only way I can keep making sense of this is…I need to do the best for the kids and me. If you have to keep doing what is best for you and those you serve, at some point I owe it to myself and those I serve to do the same. For me, that is moving to Oregon.” For me, that meant moving from San Diego to Oregon, where we could live near my folks. That would give our son a grandfather to be close to and model himself after-very important things, in my mind, for a boy. I didn’t harp on the fact that the military was taking its toll. That argument would never persuade Chris. He lived for others, not himself. It didn’t feel like an ultimatum to me. In fact, when he described it that way later on, I was shocked. “It was an ultimatum,” he said. He felt my attitude toward him would change so dramatically that the marriage would be over. There would also be a physical separation that would make it hard to stay together. Even if he wasn’t overseas, he was still likely to be based somewhere other than Oregon. We’d end up having a marriage only in name. I guess looked at one way, it was an ultimatum-us or the Navy. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I asked him if he could stay in and get an assignment overseas where we could all go, but Chris reminded me there was never a guarantee with the military-and noted he wasn’t in it to sit behind a desk. Some men have a heart condition they know will kill them, but they don’t want to go to the doctor; it’s only when their wives tell them to go that they go. It’s a poor metaphor, but I felt that getting out of the Navy was as important for Chris as it was for us. In the end, he opted to leave. Later, when Chris would give advice to guys thinking about leaving the military, he would tell them it would be a difficult decision. He wouldn’t push them one way or the other, but he would be open about his experiences. “There’ll be hard times at first,” he’d admit. “But if that is the thing you decide, those times will pass. And you’ll be able to enjoy things you never could in the service. And some of them will be a lot better. The joy you get from your family will be twice as great as the pleasure you had in the military.” Ultimatum or not, he’d come to realize retiring from the service was a good choice for all of us.

when a really cold day like this come along he’d take my grammaw, and the kids, my uncle and my aunt and my daddy—he was the youngest—and the serving girl and the hired man, and he’d go down with them to the creek, give ’em a little rum-and-herbs drink, it was a recipe he’d got from the old country, then he’d pour creek water over them. Course they’d freeze in seconds, stiff and blue as so many popsicles. He’d haul them to a trench they’d already dug and filled with straw, and he’d stack ’em down there, one by one, like so much cordwood in the trench, and he’d pack straw around them, then he’d cover the top of the trench with two-b’-fours to keep the critters out—in those days there were wolves and bears and all sorts you never see any more around here, no hodags though, that’s just a story about the hodags and I wouldn’t ever stretch your credulity by telling you no stories, no, sir,—he’d cover the trench with two-b’-fours and the next snowfall would cover it up completely, save for the flag he’d planted to show him where the trench was. “Then my grampaw would ride through the winter in comfort and never have to worry about running out of food or out of fuel. And when he saw that the true spring was coming he’d go to the flag, and he’d dig his way down through the snow, and he’d move the two-b’-fours, and he’d carry them in one by one and set the family in front of the fire to thaw. Nobody ever minded except one of the hired men who lost half an ear to a family of mice who nibbled it off one time my grampaw didn’t push those two-b’-fours all the way closed. Of course, in those days we had real winters. You could do that back then. These pussy winters we get nowadays it don’t hardly get cold enough.

There are two Santa Monicas. One is a fairy tale of spangled gowns and improbable breasts and faces from the tabloids, of big money and fixed noses and strung-out voice teachers and heiresses on skateboards and even bigger big money; of movie stars you thought were dead and look dead; of terraced apartment buildings cascading down perilous yellow bluffs toward the sea; of Olympic swimmers and hip-hop hit men and impresarios of salvation and twenty-six-year-old agents backing out of deals in the lounge bar at Shutters; of yoga masters and street magicians; of porn kings and fast cars and microdosing prophets and shuck-and-jive evangelists and tattooed tycoons and considerably bigger big money; of Sudanese busboys with capped teeth and eight-by-ten glossies in their back pockets; of Ivy League panhandlers, teenage has-beens, home-run kinds in diamonds and fur coats, daughters of sultans, sons of felons, widows of the silver screen, and the kind of meaningless big money that has forgotten what money is. There is that. But start at the pier and head southeast until you reach a neighborhood of tidy, more or less identical stucco houses separated by fourteen feet of scorched grass. In a number of these homes, you will find families, or the descendants of families, who have lived here since the mid-to-late forties. For them, upscale was a Chevy in the driveway. Mom mixed up Kool-Aid at ten cents a gallon, Pop pushed used cars at a dealership off Wilshire Boulevard, Junior had a paper route, Sis did some weekend babysitting. Nowadays, the house Pop bought for $37,000 will fetch just under two million in a sluggish market, but as Pop loved to say, secretly proud "What kind of house do you buy with the profit? A pup tent? A toolshed in Laguna?

Everyone around you is just doing their best to make it through today. Because tomorrow will come, and you have to repeat the same day over and over again.  As a kid, you go into the grocery store, and it feels like a never-ending castle filled with different rooms. You feel like every time you enter, there’s always something new to discover. But as an adult, you’ll start to get mad when they change the aisles around because now you can't find the damn oranges!  I never imagined that I would one day be employed in the magical grocery store my family and I went to every Saturday. I never imagined that the place I swore I’d never end up, would soon become the place where I was stuck. Emotionally and physically. As I watch customers trickle in and out, I create stories for each of them. The guy holding flowers and staring at his watch is probably late for a date. The young woman reading the get well soon greeting cards might have had someone close to her get hurt—or maybe they're sick.  All the stories I create for these people make me happy. They’re out in the world. They’re living whereas I’m only existing. I have nobody to share my oranges with. I have nobody to blow out candles in front of. I’m directionless and alone. This big magical place I once thought of is now holding me hostage. I had love once. I had people around me once. I had someone to grocery shop with on the weekends and laugh with when our groceries dropped through the bag. I once had someone to argue with over who was allowed to push the cart. I once had someone who would peel my oranges for me when we got home. Now, my oranges sit and rot in the bowl on my small kitchen table. I have to throw them away most of the time. Yet, I still buy them because it reminds me of something I once had. Is that all life is?

But she had learned about love through books, knew enough of it to recognize its absence in her life. Everywhere she looked, she was blinded by other forms of love, as if God were taunting her. From her bedroom window, she’d watch mothers pushing strollers, or children hanging from their father’s shoulders, or lovers holding hands. At doctors’ offices, she’d flip through magazines to find families smiling wildly, couples embracing, even women photographed alone, their bright faces shining with self-love. When she’d watch soap operas with her grandmother, love was the anchor, the glue that seemingly held the whole world together. And when she flipped through American channels when her grandparents weren’t looking, again love was the center of every show, while she, Deya, was left dangling on her own, longing for something other than her sisters to hold on to. As much as she loved them, it never felt like enough. But what did love even mean? Love was Isra staring dully out the window, refusing to look at her; love was Adam barely home; love was Fareeda’s endless attempts to marry her off, to rid herself of a burden; love was a family who never visited, not even on holidays. And maybe that was her problem. Maybe that’s why she always felt disconnected from her classmates, why she couldn’t see the world the way they did, couldn’t believe in their version of love. It was because they had mothers and fathers who wanted them, because they were coddled in a blanket of familial love, because they had never celebrated a birthday alone. It was because they had cried in someone’s arms after a bad day, had known the comforts of the words “I love you” growing up. It was because they’d been loved in their lives that they believed in love, saw it surely for themselves in their futures, even in places it clearly wasn’t.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.

There was a man in the garden with the little girl. He was turning over the soil in a garden bed. He had obviously heard the car, because he raised his hand in greeting, but then he had gone back to his work. He had actually turned his back on the car. Tina thought she knew what that meant. The man had not wanted to see Pete the policeman. Maybe he thought Pete was bringing bad news. Tina smiled. Here was good news. Finally, here was good news for this family. The man dug the garden fork into the soil with a little bit of effort. He was deliberately not looking at Pete. The little girl walked down the driveway towards them. Pete said quietly, ‘No real way to prepare them. You go ahead, Lockie.’ Lockie squeezed Tina’s hand. ‘Go on, Lockie, it’s your dad. He’s been looking for you for a long time. Go on.’ She pulled her hand slowly out of Lockie’s grip. She wanted to save him from his fear, but she had saved him once. Lockie would have to do this by himself. The little girl who was surely Sammy looked back at her father, but he was still concentrating on his work. She smiled in Pete’s direction and then she focused on Lockie. She stared at him, as if trying to work out exactly who he was. Lockie pushed his hood back, exposing his short blond hair. He stood, and Tina could sense him holding his breath, waiting for his sister to see him. To really see him. Sammy stared hard at Lockie now, frowning. And then Tina saw recognition light up her face. She looked at her father who had still not looked up. She looked back at Lockie. She started jumping up and down. ‘Lockie!’ she screamed. ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie!’ Lockie smiled.The man jerked upright and dropped the garden fork. ‘Stop that, Samantha,’ he whispered angrily. ‘Jesus, stop that! Be quiet. Stop that.’ ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie!’ The little girl flew down the driveway and launched herself at her brother, who went, ‘Oof,’ but he steadied himself and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie,’ she repeated, as if to make the moment real for herself. The man stood and stared at his children, still without realising that he was indeed looking at both his children. He started walking down the driveway. He began with an angry quick stride but the closer he got the more unsure his steps became. He was a big man in charge of a big farm but his steps became small and faltering. Tina could see the disbelief spreading across his face. Sammy let go of Lockie and took his hand. She started pulling him up the driveway. ‘It’s Lockie, Dad. Look, it’s Lockie, come look, Dad, Lockie’s home. He’s home, Dad. I knew he home. He’s home, Dad. I knew he would come home. I told you, Dad. Look its Lockie. Lockie, Lockie, Lockie’s home. Lockie’s home.’ The man stopped a few feet away from Lockie. His mouth was open. He moved it once or twice, but no words came out, and then came a sound that Tina had never heard before. It was a moaning, keening sound, but rough with the depth of his voice. It was four months of agony and the ecstasy of this moment all rolled into one. It was his heart right out there in the open for everyone to see. He opened his arms and dropped to his knees. Lockie let go of Sammy’s hand and continued alone up the driveway towards his father. He was twisting his hands and pulling at his jumper. He walked into his father’s arms and was completely surrounded by the large man. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry.’ At the bottom of the driveway Tina watched Lockie and his father. Lockie’s voice was muffled by his father’s arms, but Tina could still hear him repeating, ‘I’m sorry.’ Say it, Tina begged the man silently. Please, please, just say it. ‘Oh, Lockie,’ said the man through his tears, his large shoulders heaving. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry, Lockie. I’m sorry. I’ve been looking for you, Lockie. Where did you go, mate? Where did you go?

When we made up our minds to leave for Medina,” one emigrant would remember, “three of us arranged to meet in the morning at the thorn trees of Adat,” about six miles outside Mecca. “We agreed that if one of us failed to appear, that would mean that he had been kept back by force, and the other two should go on without him.” Only two of them reached Adat. The third was intercepted halfway there by one of his uncles, accompanied by abu-Jahl, who told him that his mother had vowed she would neither comb her hair nor take shelter from the sun until she had seen him again. On the way back, they pushed him to the ground, tied him up, and forced him to recant islam. This was how it should be done, the uncle declared: “Oh men of Mecca, deal with your fools as we have dealt with this fool of ours.” Women were not dealt with much more kindly. Umm Salama, who was later to become Muhammad’s fourth wife after she was widowed, told how her kinsmen were enraged when they saw her setting out by camel with her then husband and their infant son. “You can do as you like,” they told her husband, “but don’t think we will let you take our kinswoman away.” “They snatched the camel’s rope from my husband’s hand and took me from him,” she remembered. Then to make matters worse, her in-laws turned up, and a tussle developed over who would take custody of the child she was cradling in her arms—her family or her husband’s family. “We cannot leave the boy with you now that you have torn his mother from our kinsman,” her in-laws declared, and to her horror, both sides “dragged at my little boy between them until they dislocated his shoulder.” In the end, her husband’s family took the child, Umm Salama’s family took her, and her husband left alone for Medina. “Thus was I separated from both my husband and my son,” she would say. There was nothing she could do but “sit in the valley every day and weep” until both families finally relented. “Then I saddled my camel and took my son in my arms, and set forth for my husband in Medina. Not a soul was with me.

As time passed, I learned more and more about the culture that comes with beign an injured veteran. There are a lot of really wonderful people and organizations to help veterans returning from war. Right about the time I started to really move forward in my recovery, two women came by and introduced themselves. They explained that they raise money to help injured veterans with various needs. They asked if there was anything I or my family needed. I said, “No thank you, I’m all good.” But my sisters piped up and said, “He needs clothes. He doesn’t have anything.” The women smiled and said they’d be back. They came back with some sweatpants and a shirt and then announced that they were taking us to the mall. This would be my first time leaving the campus of Walter Reed, my first real trip out of the hospital. We were all excited. Leaving the hospital was a big step for me but my poor sisters had been cooped up much of the time with me in there as well. I was a little nervous, but I owed it to them to push aside my anxiety. We decided that the electric wheelchair would be too heavy and too much trouble to get in and out of the car, so Jennifer wheeled me down to the front door where the ladies were waiting in their car. With very little assistance, Jennifer was able to get me for that chair into the car and we were off to the mall. When we arrived, my sisters pulled the wheelchair out of the trunk and placed it next to the car door. They opened the door and Jennifer leaned down and with one swift motion lifted me up like a nearly weightless child and placed me in the chair. I laughed it off. “My sister’s strong. She’s really strong,” I boasted on her behalf. Sara, Katherine, and Jennifer were laughing the whole time because I didn’t realize how scrawny I was, how much weight I had lost. Jennifer could pick me up with no problem because I practically weighed nothing at all. But through the laughter, I felt a pang of guilt. I am the brother of three sisters. It was my job to protect and care for them. Yet here I was, barely able to take care of myself.

Earlier today—at the loft,” he said, pulling back to meet my eyes. Unflinching. Open. “I didn’t mean to insult her.” “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” He lifted a dark brow. “Why in hell would you be? I insulted your sister; you defended her. You had every right to kick my ass for it.” “I didn’t mean to … undermine you.” Shadows flickered in his eyes. “Ah.” He twisted toward the Sidra, and I followed suit. The water meandered past, its dark surface rippling with golden faelights from the streetlamps and the bright jewels of the Rainbow. “That was why it was … strange between us this afternoon.” He cringed and faced me fully. “Mother above, Feyre.” My cheeks heated and I interrupted before he could continue. “I get why, though. A solid, unified front is important.” I scratched at the smooth wood of the rail with a finger. “Especially for us.” “Not amongst our family.” Warmth spread through me at the words—our family. He took my hand, interlacing our fingers. “We can make whatever rules we want. You have every right to question me, push me—both in private and in public.” A snort. “Of course, if you decide to truly kick my ass, I might request that it’s done behind closed doors so I don’t have to suffer centuries of teasing, but—” “I won’t undermine you in public. And you won’t undermine me.” He remained quiet, letting me think, speak. “We can question each other through the bond if we’re around people other than our friends,” I said. “But for now, for these initial years, I’d like to show the world a unified front … That is, if we survive.” “We’ll survive.” Uncompromising will in those words, that face. “But I want you to feel comfortable pushing me, calling me out—” “When have I ever not done that?” He smiled. But I added, “I want you to do the same—for me.” “Deal. But amongst our family … call me on my bullshit all you want. I insist, actually.” “Why?” “Because it’s fun.” I nudged him with an elbow. “Because you’re my equal,” he said. “And as much as that means having each other’s backs in public, it also means that we grant each other the gift of honesty. Of truth.

Will’s fleshy face contorted and a memory swept over him like a chilling wind. He did not move slowly over the past, it was all there in one flash, all of the years, a picture, a feeling and a despair, all stopped the way a fast camera stops the world. There was the flashing Samuel, beautiful as dawn with a fancy like a swallow’s flight, and the brilliant, brooding Tom who was dark fire, Una who rode the storms, and the lovely Mollie, Dessie of laughter, George handsome and with a sweetness that filled a room like the perfume of flowers, and there was Joe, the youngest, the beloved. Each one without effort brought some gift into the family. Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering. He thought of himself as slow, doltish, conservative, uninspired. No great dream lifted him high and no despair forced self-destruction. He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had—care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn’t even know they needed him. He had the ability to get money and to keep it. He thought the Hamiltons despised him for his one ability. He had loved them doggedly, had always been at hand with his money to pull them out of their errors. He thought they were ashamed of him, and he fought bitterly for their recognition. All of this was in the frozen wind that blew through him. His slightly bulging eyes were damp as he stared past Cal, and the boy asked, “What’s the matter, Mr. Hamilton? Don’t you feel well?” Will had sensed his family but he had not understood them. And they had accepted him without knowing there was anything to understand. And now this boy came along. Will understood him, felt him, sensed him, recognized him. This was the son he should have had, or the brother, or the father. And the cold wind of memory changed to a warmth toward Cal which gripped him in the stomach and pushed up against his lungs.

I’m really not in the mood for your bullshit, Patrick. Go, before Ryder sees your car in the driveway or something.” “Oh, you expectin’ Ryder?” he slurs. “He gonna ride in on his white horse like a knight and save you? Is that what your hopin’ for? Maybe that’s why you been holdin’ out on me. You wanna give it to him instead.” His eyes are glassy, slightly unfocused. It’s obvious I can’t let him drive home like this. Shit. Ignoring his drunken little tirade, I reach for his hand and drag him into the living room, pushing him toward the velvet sofa. “C’mon, Patrick, you need to lie down. I’m going to call someone to come pick you up.” His legs buckle the minute they hit the cushions, and he crumples into a heap--half on the floor, half on the sofa. He starts to make a retching noise, and I hurriedly slip off my hoodie and shove it under his face. “I swear, if you puke on my sofa, I’m going to freaking kill you.” Mercifully, he doesn’t. Instead, he starts making a quiet, snuffling noise. Like he’s passed out cold. I run upstairs and grab my cell from my bedroom, trying to decide who to call. Obviously, Ryder makes the most sense, since he lives just up the road and can be here in a matter of minutes. But what if he mentions it to his mom? I mean, I can tell him not to, but then it makes me look guilty, like I’m trying to hide something. It’s not my fault that Patrick showed up on my doorstep unannounced. I run through the other options in my head. Calling Ben or Mason is about the same as calling Ryder. They’re his best friends. They talk. I could try Tanner. He is my cousin, so I could invoke some sort of family loyalty oath of silence or something. Only problem is, Tanner lives on the far side of town--about as far away from here as anyone can be and still live in Magnolia Branch. Which means leaving a passed-out, about-to-puke Patrick on my couch for a good twenty minutes, waiting for a ride. Nope. Not gonna happen. With a sigh of resignation, I dial Ryder’s number. Exactly seven minutes later, he knocks on the door. Ryder to the rescue. I resist the urge to look around for his white horse.

I am assured that this is a true story. A man calls up his computer helpline complaining that the cupholder on his personal computer has snapped off, and he wants to know how to get it fixed. “Cupholder?” says the computer helpline person, puzzled. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m confused. Did you buy this cupholder at a computer show or receive it as a special promotion?” “No, it came as part of the standard equipment on my computer.” “But our computers don’t come with cupholders.” “Well, pardon me, friend, but they do,” says the man a little hotly. “I’m looking at mine right now. You push a button on the base of the unit and it slides right out.” The man, it transpired, had been using the CD drawer on his computer to hold his coffee cup. I bring this up here by way of introducing our topic this week: cupholders. Cupholders are taking over the world. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of cupholders in automotive circles these days. The New York Times recently ran a long article in which it tested a dozen family cars. It rated each of them for ten important features, among them engine size, trunk space, handling, quality of suspension, and, yes, number of cupholders. A car dealer acquaintance of ours tells us that they are one of the first things people remark on, ask about, or play with when they come to look at a car. People buy cars on the basis of cupholders. Nearly all car advertisements note the number of cupholders prominently in the text. Some cars, like the newest model of the Dodge Caravan, come with as many as seventeen cupholders. The largest Caravan holds seven passengers. Now you don’t have to be a nuclear physicist, or even wide awake, to work out that that is 2.43 cupholders per passenger. Why, you may reasonably wonder, would each passenger in a vehicle need 2.43 cupholders? Good question. Americans, it is true, consume positively staggering volumes of fluids. One of our local gas stations, I am reliably informed, sells a flavored confection called a Slurpee in containers up to 60 ounces in size. But even if every member of the family had a Slurpee and a personal bottle of

One day Marlboro Man invited my sister, Betsy, and me to the ranch to work cattle. She was home from college and bored, and Marlboro Man wanted Tim to meet another member of my family. “Working cattle” is the term used to describe the process of pushing cattle, one by one, through a working chute, during which time they are branded, dehorned, ear tagged, and “doctored” (temperature taken, injections given). The idea is to get all the trauma and mess over with in one fell swoop so the animals can spend their days grazing peacefully in the pasture. When Betsy and I pulled up and parked, Tim greeted us at the chute and immediately assigned us our duties. He handed my sister a hot shot, which is used to gently zap the animal’s behind to get it to move through the chute. It’s considered the easy job. “You’ll be pushing ’em through,” Tim told Betsy. She dutifully took the hot shot, studying the oddly shaped object in her hands. Next, Tim handed me an eight-inch-long, thick-gauge probe with some kind of electronic device attached. “You’ll be taking their temperature,” Tim informed me. Easy enough, I thought. But how does this thing fit into its ear? Or does it slide under its arm somehow? Perhaps I insert it under the tongue? Will the cows be okay with this? Tim showed me to my location--at the hind end of the chute. “You just wait till the steer gets locked in the chute,” Tim directed. “Then you push the stick all the way in and wait till I tell you to take it out.” Come again? The bottom fell out of my stomach as my sister shot me a worried look, and I suddenly wished I’d eaten something before we came. I felt weak. I didn’t dare question the brother of the man who made my heart go pitter-pat, but…in the bottom? Up the bottom? Seriously? Before I knew it, the first animal had entered the chute. Various cowboys were at different positions around the animal and began carrying out their respective duties. Tim looked at me and yelled, “Stick it in!” With utter trepidation, I slid the wand deep into the steer’s rectum. This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t normal. At least it wasn’t for me. This was definitely against God’s plan.

A daunting example of the impact that the loose talk and heavy rhetoric of the Sixties had on policy can be seen in the way the black family—a time-bomb ticking ominously, and exploding with daily detonations—got pushed off the political agenda. While Carmichael, Huey Newton and others were launching a revolutionary front against the system, the Johnson administration was contemplating a commitment to use the power of the federal government to end the economic and social inequalities that still plagued American blacks. A presidential task force under Daniel Patrick Moynihan was given a mandate to identify the obstacles preventing blacks from seizing opportunities that had been grasped by other minority groups in the previous 50 years of American history. At about the same time as the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Moynihan published findings that emphasized the central importance of family in shaping an individual life and noted with alarm that 21 percent of black families were headed by single women. “[The] one unmistakable lesson in American history,” he warned, is that a country that allows “a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future—that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder—most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure—that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable.” Moynihan proposed that the government confront this problem as a priority; but his conclusions were bitterly attacked by black radicals and white liberals, who joined in an alliance of anger and self-flagellation and quickly closed the window of opportunity Moynihan had opened. They condemned his report as racist not only in its conclusions but also in its conception; e.g., it had failed to stress the evils of the “capitalistic system.” This rejectionist coalition did not want a program for social change so much as a confession of guilt. For them the only “non-racist” gesture the president could make would be acceptance of their demand for $400 million in “reparations” for 400 years of slavery. The White House retreated before this onslaught and took the black family off the agenda.

Bobby ran up on the deck and skidded to a stop in front of them. “It’s time for the Kowalski Fourth of July Football Game of Doom!” Cat laughed and pushed herself out of her seat. “We’ll talk about this some other time, Emma. Go have fun.” “I’m not sure I want to play football. Especially if there’s doom involved,” she said, but Bobby grabbed her hand and dragged her off the deck. They were divvied up into teams roughly by size, each with an assortment of men, women and children. Emma was on Sean’s team, which was good. She’d just hide behind him, because the only thing she knew about football was that it involved a lot of hitting. It only took a few plays to see that the Kowalskis played by their own rules and the few they had were fluid. Mostly they served to ensure the smaller kids didn’t get plowed over, victims of the adults’ competitive streak. Five minutes into the game, Emma somehow ended up with the ball. She squealed and looked around for somebody—anybody—to hand it off to, but there was nobody. Well, there was Danny, but he was doubled over in laughter. “Run, Emma,” Lisa yelled. She ran in the direction her friend was frantically waving her hand, but she only went a few feet before two very strong arms wrapped around her waist and then she was falling. Luckily, she landed on a body instead of the ground. “I love football,” Mitch said, grinning up at her. Emma grimaced and managed to get one of her knees on solid ground so she could push herself to her feet. He was quicker and freed himself to stand and help her up. “They should give you the ball more often,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling and the grin so like Sean’s—but not quite as naughty—in full force. “Hands off my girl,” Sean told him, pulling on Emma’s elbow. “You should do a better job of blocking for her. “Let’s go,” Brian shouted. The very next play, Mitch intercepted Mike’s pass to Evan and turned to run toward the other end zone. He was halfway there when Sean took him down hard. They hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud that made Emma wince, and came up pushing and shoving. When Sean drew back his arm to throw the first punch, Mary blew her whistle from the sidelines. “Boys! Enough!” Instead of heading straight for the huddle, Sean walked to Emma and pulled her into his arms for a hard, almost punishing caveman kiss that made her skin sizzle and her knees go wobbly. Then he glared at his brother for a few long seconds and went back to his team, leaving Emma standing there breathless and discombobulated.

And you know what else they probably pray for every night?” I paused for a moment before saying, “Someone to save them. We could be that someone. We could end this plague. We could save the world. But I can’t do it alone. I’m gonna need your help, specifically the help of our tier 1s and tier 2s.” The crowd started murmuring to each other. “So, that’s what this speech is about—I’m asking for volunteers for this final mission. Now, I know what I’m asking, and I know it’s a lot. I’m basically asking you to risk your lives to help me fight the hardest battle ever. And I can’t guarantee your safety, nor can I guarantee our success… but still, we have to try. For the greater good, we have to try. Because we’ve come too far to give up now. That’s why we’re gonna give this one last mission our best effort. We’re gonna all come together and push hard through the finish line. And with our newly crafted dragon equipment and all the new class upgrades, I believe our chance of success is higher than ever before. So, with that in mind, what say you, my friends? Who’s with me? Who’s gonna help me put an end to the nightly plagues?” There was a brief moment of silence as my final words echoed through the night. But then Devlin spoke up. “I’m with you, Steve! Always.” “Me, too!” yelled Bob. “An epic fight between good and evil?! Can’t miss out on that!” shouted Arthur. “I got your back, bro!” yelled Obsidian Fist. Dozens of more tier 1s and 2s volunteered and made themselves heard. As I watched their hands shot up into the air, I smiled and let out a breath of relief. “Were you worried that there wouldn’t be enough volunteers?” the mayor whispered to me. “Yeah, kinda…” I whispered back. Then he smiled at me. “You’re their general, Steve. They’re not going to let you go off into battle alone… and neither would I.” He shook my hand. “Great speech, by the way. I’ll take it from here.” “Thank you, sir,” I said as I handed him the microphone. The mayor’s voice boomed over the speakers. “Alright, well said. Let’s give it up for General Steve!” Everyone clapped and cheered. “For those of you that volunteered, we’ll be heading out in a day or two. We still need to make preparations for the trip, and Cole still needs to fit the new armor to the golem suits, so all that is going to take some time. I’d suggest you use this time wisely—spend it with family, friends and loved ones. Eat with them, relax with them, be merry and carefree. Because when it is time to go, we’ll be in it to fight the battle of our lives.” The tier 1s and 2s in the crowd nodded.

Dear Mom and Dad How are you? If you are reading this it means your back from the wonderful cruise my brothers and I sent you on for your anniversary. We’re sure you both had a wonderful time. We want you to know that, while you were away, we did almost everything you asked. All but one thing, that is. We killed the lawn. We killed it dead. You asked us not to and we killed it. We killed it with extreme prejudice and no regard for its planty life. We killed the lawn. Now we know what you’re thinking: “But sons, whom we love ever so much, how can this be so? We expressly asked you to care for the lawn? The exactly opposite of what you are now conveying to us in an open digital forum.” True enough. We cannot dispute this. However, we have killed the lawn. We have killed it good. We threw a party and it was quite a good time. We had a moon bounce and beer and games and pirate costumes, oh it was a good time. Were it anyone else’s party that probably would have been enough but, hey, you know us. So we got a foam machine. A frothy, wet, quite fun yet evidently deadly, foam machine. Now this dastardly devise didn’t kill the lawn per se. We hypothesize it was more that it made the lawn very wet and that dancing in said area for a great many hours over the course of several days did the deed. Our jubilant frolicking simply beat the poor grass into submission. We collected every beer cap, bottle, and can. There is not a single cigarette butt or cigar to be found. The house is still standing, the dog is still barking, Grandma is still grandmaing but the lawn is no longer lawning. Now we’re sure, as you return from your wonderful vacation, that you’re quite upset but lets put this in perspective. For one thing whose idea was it for you to leave us alone in the first place? Not your best parenting decision right there. We’re little better than baboons. The mere fact that we haven’t killed each other in years past is, at best, luck. Secondly, let us not forget, you raised us to be this way. Always pushing out limits, making sure we thought creatively. This is really as much your fault as it is ours, if not more so. If anything we should be very disappointed in you. Finally lets not forget your cruise was our present to you. We paid for it. If you look at how much that cost and subtract the cost of reseeding the lawn you still came out ahead so, really, what position are you in to complain? So let’s review; we love you, you enjoyed a week on a cruise because of us, the lawn is dead, and it’s partially your fault. Glad that’s all out in the open. Can you have dinner ready for us by 6 tonight? We’d like macaroni and cheese. Love always Peter, James & Carmine

Punishment is not care, and poverty is not a crime. We need to create safe, supportive pathways for reentry into the community for all people and especially young people who are left out and act out. Interventions like decriminalizing youthful indiscretions for juvenile offenders and providing foster children and their families with targeted services and support would require significant investment and deliberate collaboration at the community, state, and federal levels, as well as a concerted commitment to dismantling our carceral state. These interventions happen automatically and privately for young offenders who are not poor, whose families can access treatment and hire help, and who have the privilege of living and making mistakes in neighborhoods that are not over-policed. We need to provide, not punish, and to foster belonging and self-sufficiency for our neighbors’ kids. More, funded YMCAs and community centers and summer jobs, for example, would help do this. These kinds of interventions would benefit all the Carloses, Wesleys, Haydens, Franks, and Leons, and would benefit our collective well-being. Only if we consider ourselves bound together can we reimagine our obligation to each other as community. When we consider ourselves bound together in community, the radically civil act of redistributing resources from tables with more to tables with less is not charity, it is responsibility; it is the beginning of reparation. Here is where I tell you that we can change this story, now. If we seek to repair systemic inequalities, we cannot do it with hope and prayers; we have to build beyond the systems and begin not with rehabilitation but prevention. We must reimagine our communities, redistribute our wealth, and give our neighbors access to what they need to live healthy, sustainable lives, too. This means more generous social benefits. This means access to affordable housing, well-resourced public schools, affordable healthcare, jobs, and a higher minimum wage, and, of course, plenty of good food. People ask me what educational policy reform I would suggest investing time and money in, if I had to pick only one. I am tempted to talk about curriculum and literacy, or teacher preparation and salary, to challenge whether police belong in schools, to push back on standardized testing, or maybe debate vocational education and reiterate that educational policy is housing policy and that we cannot consider one without the other. Instead, as a place to start, I say free breakfast and lunch. A singular reform that would benefit all students is the provision of good, free food at school. (Data show that this practice yields positive results; but do we need data to know this?) Imagine what would happen if, across our communities, people had enough to feel fed.

Even so, most of the stories people told about Amos [Tversky] had less to do with what came out of his mouth than with the unusual way he moved through the world. He kept the hours of a vampire. He went to bed when the sun came up and woke up at happy hour. He ate pickles for breakfast and eggs for dinner. He minimized quotidian tasks he thought a waste of time—he could be found in the middle of the day, having just woken up, driving himself to work while shaving and brushing his teeth in the rearview mirror. “He never knew what time of the day it was,” said his daughter, Dona. “It didn’t matter. He’s living in his own sphere and you just happened to encounter him there.” He didn’t pretend to be interested in whatever others expected him to be interested in—God help anyone who tried to drag him to a museum or a board meeting. “For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like,” Amos liked to say, plucking a line from the Muriel Spark novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. “He just skipped family vacations,” says his daughter. “He’d come if he liked the place. Otherwise he didn’t.” The children didn’t take it personally: They loved their father and knew that he loved them. “He loved people,” said his son Oren. “He just didn’t like social norms. A lot of things that most human beings would never think to do, to Amos simply made sense. For instance, when he wanted to go for a run he . . . went for a run. No stretching, no jogging outfit or, for that matter, jogging: He’d simply strip off his slacks and sprint out his front door in his underpants and run as fast as he could until he couldn’t run anymore. “Amos thought people paid an enormous price to avoid mild embarrassment,” said his friend Avishai Margalit, “and he himself decided very early on it was not worth it.” What all those who came to know Amos eventually realized was that the man had a preternatural gift for doing only precisely what he wanted to do. Varda Liberman recalled visiting him one day and seeing a table with a week’s worth of mail on it. There were tidy little stacks, one for each day, each filled with requests and entreaties and demands upon Amos’s time: job offers, offers of honorary degrees, requests for interviews and lectures, requests for help with some abstruse problem, bills. When the new mail came in Amos opened anything that interested him and left the rest in its daily pile. Each day the new mail arrived and shoved the old mail down the table. When a pile reached the end of the table Amos pushed it, unopened, off the edge into a waiting garbage can. “The nice thing about things that are urgent,” he liked to say, “is that if you wait long enough they aren’t urgent anymore.” “I would say to Amos I have to do this or I have to do that,” recalled his old friend Yeshu Kolodny. “And he would say, ‘No. You don’t.’ And I thought: lucky man!

In the course of my discussion with Ravenswood, I tried to get him to tell me how you got your scar, but he wouldn’t. He said I’d have to ask you.” Jane’s words came suddenly into his head: That’s why you haven’t shared this with your own family? That’s why you keep all of us out? Because you think it was your fault? Oh, my sweet darling, none of it was your fault. When Dom didn’t answer right away, Tristan went on, “I told Ravenswood you’d always brushed off the question with some nonsense about a fight you got into. But that isn’t true, I assume.” Dom ventured a glance at his brother and winced to see the hurt on his face. Jane had said, Every time you refuse to reveal your secrets, Dom, I assume that you find me unworthy to hear them. Apparently, that was how he’d made all of them feel. As if he were somehow too important to let them into his life. Only God could have stopped this disaster, and contrary to what you think, you aren’t God. When she’d said it, he hadn’t understood why she would accuse him of such a thing. Why she sometimes called him “Dom the Almighty.” But he understood now. By shielding his guilt from the world, he’d shut himself off from his family. From her. He’d pushed away the very people he should have embraced. Having just watched Jane retreat into fear and shut him out, he now knew precisely how painful it could feel to be on the receiving end. If he wanted to change all that, he would have to start opening his heart, letting his family--and her--see the things he was most ashamed of, most worried about. He would have to trust them to understand, to empathize, to love him in spite of everything. The only other choice was to keep closing himself up until, as she’d said at that ball last year: One day that church you’re building around yourself shall become your crypt. He didn’t want that. He took a steadying breath as he and Tristan walked up the steps to Ravenswood’s manor house. “As it happens, I did receive my scar in a fight. But it was a fight against the militia at the Peterloo Massacre.” When Tristan shot him a startled look, Dom halted at the top of the steps to face him. “If you want to hear the story, I’ll tell you all about it. Right now, if you wish.” Tristan searched his face, as if not quite sure he believed what he was hearing. “I’d like that very much.” Then he broke into a grin. “But only if we do it over a glass of Ravenswood’s brandy. That’s the best damned brandy I’ve ever tasted.” “One of the privileges of being a spymaster is that you can get your hands on the good stuff,” Dom said lightly, though his stomach churned at the thought of revealing his most humiliating secret, even to his brother. Still, as they headed inside, Tristan clapped him on the shoulder, and that reassured him. Telling Tristan about Peterloo represented a beginning of sorts, toward a closer friendship than Dom had allowed himself to have with his brother in recent years. Jane would be proud.

We are not your enemies, Feyre,' Lucien pleaded. 'Things got bad, Ianthe got out of hand, but it doesn't mean you give up-' 'You gave up,' I breathed. I felt even Rhys go still. 'You gave up on me,' I said a bit more loudly. 'You were my friend. And you picked him- picked obeying him, even when you saw what his orders and his rules did to me. Even when you saw me wasting away day by day.' 'You have no idea how volatile those first few months were,' Lucien snapped. 'We needed to present a unified, obedient front, and I was supposed to be the example to which all others in our court were held.' 'You saw what was happening to me. But you were too afraid of him to truly do anything about it.' It was fear. Lucien had pushed Tamlin, but to a point. He'd always yielded at the end. 'I begged you,' I said, the words sharp and breathless. 'I begged you so many times to help me, to get me out of the house, even for an hour. And you left me alone, or shoved me into a room with Ianthe, or told me to stick it out.' Lucien said too quietly, 'And I suppose the Night Court is so much better?' I remembered- remembered what I was supposed to know, to have experienced. What Lucien and the others could never know, not even if it meant forfeiting my own life. And I would. To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and... Rhys safe. I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, 'When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.' A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolt of cold through me. Sensitive- so sensitive, those Illyrian wings. Lucien backed up a step. 'What did you do to yourself?' I gave him a little smile. 'The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord's pet.' Lucien started shaking his head. 'Feyre-' 'Tell Tamlin,' I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he'd done to Rhys, to his family, 'if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me. There was something like genuine pain on his face. I didn't care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, for centuries... until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savour the pain of others. Lucien nodded to his sentinels. Bron and Hart, wide-eyed and shaking, vanished with the other two. Lucien lingered for a moment, nothing but air and rain between us. He said softly to Rhysand, 'You're dead. You, and your entire cursed court.' Then he was gone.

Don’t provoke Cheat,” Arin said as they stepped out of the carriage and onto the dusky path that led to the governor’s palace, which looked eerie to Kestrel because its impressive façade was the same as the night before, but the lights burning in the windows were now few. “Kestrel, do you hear me? You can’t toy with him.” “He started it.” “That’s not the point.” Gravel crunched under Arin’s heavy boots as he stalked up the path. “Don’t you understand that he wants you dead? He’d leap at the chance,” Arin said, hands in pockets, head down, almost talking to himself. He strode ahead, his long legs quicker than hers. “I can’t--Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize--my prize--it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won’t harm you, I swear that he won’t, but you must…hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you’re not better off dead. Swallow your pride.” “Maybe that’s not as easy for me as it is for you.” He wheeled on her. “It’s not easy for me,” he said through his teeth. “You know that it’s not. What do you think I have had to swallow, these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?” They stood before the palace door. “Truly,” she said, “I haven’t the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else.” He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: “You can make people feel so small.” Kestrel went hot with shame--then was ashamed of her own shame. Who was he, that she should apologize? He had used her. He had lied. Nothing he said meant anything. If she was to feel shame, it should be for having been so easily fooled. He ran fingers through his cropped hair, but slowly, anger gone, replaced by something heavier. He didn’t look at her. His breath smoked the chill air. “Do what you want to me. Say anything. But it frightens me how you refuse to see the danger you risk with others. Maybe now you’ll see.” He opened the door to the governor’s home. The smell struck her first. Blood and decaying flesh. It pushed at Kestrel’s gut. She fought not to gag. Bodies were piled in the reception hall. Lady Neril was lying facedown, almost in the same place where she had stood the night of the ball, greeting guests. Kestrel recognized her by the scarf in her fist, fabric bright in the guttering torchlight. There were hundreds of dead. She saw Captain Wensan, Lady Faris, Senator Nicon’s whole family, Benix… Kestrel knelt next to him. His large hand felt like cold clay. She could hear her tears drip to his clothes. They beaded on his skin. Quietly, Arin said, “He’ll be buried today, with the others.” “He should be burned. We burn our dead.” She couldn’t look at Benix anymore, but neither could she get to her feet. Arin helped her, his touch gentle. “I’ll make certain it’s done right.” Kestrel forced her legs to move, to walk past bodies heaped like rubble. She thought that she must have fallen asleep after all, and that this was an evil dream. She paused at the sight of Irex. His mouth was the stained purple of the poisoned, but he had sticky gashes in his side, and one final cut to the neck. Even poisoned, he had fought. Tears came again. Arin’s hold tightened. He pushed her past Irex. “Don’t you dare weep for him. If he weren’t dead, I would kill him myself.

Should I be scared?” “I think you should get ready for quite an inquiry, but they’re necessary questions that must be answered if I want to ask you out on a second date.” “What if I don’t want to go on a second date?” “Hmm.” He taps his chin with his fork, ready to dig in the minute the plate arrives at our table. “That’s a good point. All right. If the question arose, would you go on a second date with me?” “Well, now I feel pressured to say yes just so I can hear the inquiry.” “You’re going to have to deal with the pressure, sweet cheeks.” “Fine. Hypothetically, if you were to ask me out on a second date, I would hypothetically, possibly say yes.” “Great.” He bops his own nose with his fork and then sets it down on the table. “Here goes.” He looks serious; both his hands rest palm down on the table and his shoulders stiffen. Looking me dead in the eyes, he asks, “Bobbies and Rebels are in the World Series, what shirt do you wear?” “Bobbies obviously.” He blinks. Sits back. “What?” “Bobbies for life.” “But I’m on the Rebels.” “Yes, but are we dating, are we married? Are we just fooling around? There’s going to have to be a huge commitment on my part in order to put a Rebels shirt on. Sorry.” “We’re dating.” “Eh.” I wave my hand. “Fine. We’re living together.” “Hmm, I don’t know.” I twist a strand of hair in my finger. “Christ, we’re married.” “Ugh.” I wince. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think it will ever happen.” “Not even if we’re married, for fuck’s sake?” he asks, dumbfounded. It’s endearing, especially since he’s pushing his hand through his hair in distress, tousling it. “Do we have kids?” I ask. “Six.” “Six?” Now it’s time for my eyes to pop out of their sockets. “Do you really think I want to birth six children?” “Hell, no.” He shakes his head. “We adopted six kids from all around the world. We’re going to have the most diverse and loving family you’ll ever see.” Adopting six kids, now that’s incredibly sweet. Or mad? No, it’s sweet. In fact, it’s extremely rare to meet a man who not only knows he wants to adopt kids, but is willing to look outside of the US, knowing how much he could offer that child. Good God, this man is a unicorn. “We have the means for it, after all,” he says, continuing. “You’re taking over the city of Chicago, and I’ll be raining home runs on every opposing team. We would be the power couple, the new king and queen of the city. Excuse me, Oprah and Steadman, a new, hip couple is in town. People would wear our faces on their shirts like the royals in England. We’re the next Kate and William, the next Meghan and Harry. People will scream our name and then faint, only for us to give them mouth-to-mouth because even though we’re super famous, we are also humanitarians.” “Wow.” I sit back in my chair. “That’s quite the picture you paint.” I know what my mom will say about him already. Don’t lose him, Dorothy. He’s gold. Gorgeous and selfless. “So . . . with all that said, our six children at your side, would you wear a Rebels shirt?” I take some time to think about it, mulling over the idea of switching to black and red as my team colors. Could I do it? With the way Jason is smiling at me, hope in his eyes, how could I ever deny him that joy—and I say that as if we’ve been married for ten years. “I would wear halfsies. Half Bobbies, half Rebels, and that’s the best I can do.” He lifts his finger to the sky. “I’ll take it.

Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: You were also looking for some operational criteria for false memory syndrome: what a clinician could look for or test for, and so on. I spoke with several of our scientific advisory board members and I have some information for you that isn't really in writing at this point but I think it's a direction you want us to go in. So if I can read some of these notes . . . TAT: Please do. Freyd: One would look for false memory syndrome: 1. If a patient reports having been sexually abused by a parent, relative or someone in very early childhood, but then claims that she or he had complete amnesia about it for a decade or more; 2. If the patient attributes his or her current reason for being in therapy to delayed-memories. And this is where one would want to look for evidence suggesting that the abuse did not occur as demonstrated by a list of things, including firm, confident denials by the alleged perpetrators; 3. If there is denial by the entire family; 4. In the absence of evidence of familial disturbances or psychiatric illnesses. For example, if there's no evidence that the perpetrator had alcohol dependency or bipolar disorder or tendencies to pedophilia; 5. If some of the accusations are preposterous or impossible or they contain impossible or implausible elements such as a person being made pregnant prior to menarche, being forced to engage in sex with animals, or participating in the ritual killing of animals, and; 6. In the absence of evidence of distress surrounding the putative abuse. That is, despite alleged abuse going from age two to 27 or from three to 16, the child displayed normal social and academic functioning and that there was no evidence of any kind of psychopathology. Are these the kind of things you were asking for? TAT: Yeah, it's a little bit more specific. I take issue with several, but at least it gives us more of a sense of what you all mean when you say "false memory syndrome." Freyd: Right. Well, you know I think that things are moving in that direction since that seems to be what people are requesting. Nobody's denying that people are abused and there's no one denying that someone who was abused a decade ago or two decades ago probably would not have talked about it to anybody. I think I mentioned to you that somebody who works in this office had that very experience of having been abused when she was a young teenager-not extremely abused, but made very uncomfortable by an uncle who was older-and she dealt with it for about three days at the time and then it got pushed to the back of her mind and she completely forgot about it until she was in therapy. TAT: There you go. That's how dissociation works! Freyd: That's how it worked. And after this came up and she had discussed and dealt with it in therapy, she could again put it to one side and go on with her life. Certainly confronting her uncle and doing all these other things was not a part of what she had to do. Interestingly, though, at the same time, she has a daughter who went into therapy and came up with memories of having been abused by her parents. This daughter ran away and is cutoff from the family-hasn't spoken to anyone for three years. And there has never been any meeting between the therapist and the whole family to try to find out what was involved. TAT: If we take the first example -- that of her own abuse -- and follow the criteria you gave, we would have a very strong disbelief in the truth of what she told.

Billy sipped the last of his coffee from the mug and shut down his laptop. 1,000 words wasn’t great but it also wasn’t as bad as no words at all. It hadn’t exactly been a great couple of years and the royalties from his first few books were only going to hold out so much longer. Even if he didn’t have anything else to worry about there was always Sara to consider. Sara with her big blue eyes so like her mother’s. He sat for a moment longer thinking about his daughter and all they’d been through since Wendy had passed. Then he picked up his mug with a long sigh and carried it to the kitchen to rinse it in the sink. When he came back into his little living room and the quiet of 1 AM he wasn’t surprised to find her there over to the side of the bookshelf hovering close to the floor just beyond the couch. Wendy. Her eyes were cold and intense in death, angry and spiteful in a way he’d never seen them when she was alive. What once had been beautiful was now a horror and a threat, one that he’d known far too well in the years since she’d died. He and Sara both. He stood where he was looking at her as she glared up at him. Part of her smaller vantage point was caused by kneeling next to the shelf but he knew from the many times she’d walked or run through a room that death had also reduced her, made her no higher than 4 or 4 and half feet when she’d been 6 in life. She was like a child trapped there on the cusp between youth and coming adulthood. Crushed and broken down into a husk, an entity with no more love for them than a snake. Familiar tears stung his eyes but he blinked them away letting his anger and frustration rise in place of his grief. “Fuck you! What right do you have to be here? Why won’t you let Sara and I be? We loved you! We still love you!” She doesn’t respond, she never does. It’s as if she used up all of her words before she died and now all that’s left is the pain and the anger of her death. The empty lack of true life in her eyes leaves him cold. He doesn’t say anything else to her. It’s all a waste and he knows it. She frightens him as much as she makes him angry. Spite lives in every corner of her body and he’s reached his limit on how long he can see this perversion, this nightmare of what once meant so much to him. He walks past the bookshelf and through the doorway there. He and Sara’s rooms are up above. With an effort he resists the urge to look back down the hall to see if she’s followed. He refuses to treat his wife like a boogeyman no matter how much she has come to fit that mold. He can feel her eyes burning into him from somewhere back at the edge of the living room. The sensation leaves a cold trail of fear up his back as he walks the last four feet to the stairs and then up. He can hear her feet rush across the floor behind him and the rustle of fabric as she darts up the stairs after him. His pulse and his feet speed up as she grows closer but he’s never as fast as she is. Soon she slips up the steps under his foot shoving him aside as she crawls on her hands and feet through his legs and up the last few stairs above. As she passes through his legs, her presence never more clear than when it’s shoving right against him, he smells the clean and medicinal smells of the operating room and the cloying stench of blood. For a moment he’s back in that room with her, listening to her grunt and keen as she works so hard at pushing Sara into the world and then he’s back looking up at her as she slowly considers the landing and where to go from there. His voice is a whisper, one that pleads. “Wendy?

brave face and be strong for Austin’s mother. She was the girlfriend, and if Carly could function normally, so could she. She didn’t deserve to be there, at least not as family, but she couldn’t exactly tell Carly why. The secret she kept weighed heavily on her, pushing down on her already-broken heart. It was her burden to bear and one she would take to the grave if she had to. The car door swung open, and Brooklyn caught the eyes of Bowie staring down at her. All her mind saw was Austin standing behind him. They had been inseparable, best friends almost until the end. She knew Bowie’s secrets, and he knew hers. His outstretched hand waited. It would make sense for him to escort her into the church, to sit by her, to be her shoulder to cry on. She had spent years doing that, confiding in him. But that was weeks ago. Life was different now. She ignored him and mustered up her own strength to climb out of the limo.

Nonetheless, Donald’s displays of confidence, his belief that society’s rules didn’t apply to him, and his exaggerated display of self-worth drew some people to him. A large minority of people still confuse his arrogance for strength, his false bravado for accomplishment, and his superficial interest in them for charisma. Donald had discovered early on how easy it was to get under Robert’s pale skin and push him past his limits; it was a game he never tired of playing. Nobody else would have bothered—Robert was so skinny and quiet that there was no sport in tormenting him—but Donald enjoyed flexing his power, even if only over his younger, smaller, and even thinner-skinned brother. Once, out of frustration and helplessness, Robert kicked a hole in their bathroom door, which got him into trouble despite the fact that Donald had driven him to it. When his mother told Donald to stop, he didn’t; when Maryanne and Freddy told him to stop, he didn’t. One Christmas the boys received three Tonka trucks, which soon became Robert’s favorite toys. As soon as Donald figured that out, he started hiding them from his little brother and pretending he had no idea where they were. The last time it happened, when Robert’s tantrum spiraled out of control, Donald threatened to dismantle the trucks in front of him if he didn’t stop crying.

I looked around to make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind, closed the door behind me, and collapsed sobbing, on the little cement landing, gripping, the cold metal railing to keep from falling over completely. Thinking back on it now, it reminds me of labor. There was a point during my son's birth when my contractions changed very suddenly from gripping to pushing. I was not in control; my body and the wisdom it held from thousands of years of evolution took over. My body did the same with my grief. It seized my bones and muscles and pushed it out. There in the rain outside my dad's home, I bawled and shook wildly for a few moments.

He was probably frightened for me, seeing the horse topple over like that.” “Probably?” Leo repeated. “He looked like he had just seen Death. I believe it may have touched off one of his bad spells, or whatever it is you call them.” “I must go to him.” “Not dressed like that.” “For heaven’s sake, Leo, just this one time—” “No exceptions, darling. I know my sisters. Give any one of you an inch, and you’ll take a mile.” He reached out and pushed back her tumbling hair. “Also . . . don’t go without a chaperone.” “I don’t want a chaperone. That’s never any fun.” “Yes, Beatrix, that’s the purpose of a chaperone.” “Well, in our family, anyone who chaperoned me would probably need a chaperone more than I do.” Leo opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Rare was the occasion when her brother was unable to argue a point. Repressing a grin, Beatrix strode toward the house.

Family members can be most helpful by offering support, understanding, kindness, patience, and encouragement in doing the Four Steps—but not by pampering or indulging the person’s OCD. Reinforcement is essential; every improvement should be recognized. People with OCD need to feel good about themselves, since it’s been a long time since they’ve done so. What they don’t need is angry criticism; they are already critical enough of themselves. Nor should they be pushed too fast to get well; their goal will be reached by taking a lot of small steps, not giant leaps. Sure, there will be times when the partner is tired and out of patience with OCD and needs his or her own time out. That’s okay, too. There should be no guilt feelings about that—in fact, the person with OCD should encourage it.

He watched me grieve and he didn’t try to make things more comfortable by interrupting or analyzing the issue. He let me tell the story in whatever way I needed to say" "Of course, there are times when something just isn't right between therapists, and patient, when the therapist's countertransference is getting in the way. One sign: having negative feelings about the patient". "Our experiences with this person are important because we're probably feeling something very similar to what everyone else in these patients' life feels." "If you expect an hour of sympathetic head nodding, you've come to the wrong place. Therapist will be supportive, but our support is for your growth, not for our low opinion of your partner (our role is to understand your perspective but not necessarily endorse it)" "A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, to stare back at it and say "oh isn’t that interesting? Now what instead of turning away?" "The therapist explained that often-different parts of ourselves want different things and if we silence the parts we find unacceptable they'll find other ways to be heard." "So many of our destructive behaviors take root in an emotional void, an emptiness that calls out of something to fill it." "Whenever one person in the family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy or positive, it's not unusual for other members in this family to do everything they can do to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis." "Once we know what we are feeling we can make choices about where we want to go with them. But if we push them away the second they appear, often we end up veering off in the wrong direction, getting lost yet again in the land of chaos." "I know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from coming, or ensure that Ill always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don’t perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. Therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknown yourself- let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are, so that you aren’t trap by them, so that you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life." "The noonday demon: "The opposite of depression isn't happiness but vitality" "We marry our unfinished business" "Babies can die from lack of touch, and so can adults (adults who are touched regularly live longer). There is even a name for this condition: skin hunger" "What most people mean by type is a sense of attraction a type of physical appearance or a type of personality turns them on. But what underlies a person's type, in fact, is a sense of familiarity, It is not coincidence that people who had angry parents, often end up choosing angry partners.

They pulled up to 195 Madison Street - a tall narrow six-story redbrick and limestone-trimmed tenement house indistinguishable from all the tenement houses on all the other streets of tenements. The bars and ladders of a fire escape ran up the left side of the building; sooty stone scrolls, shields, and flowers framed the second- and third-story windows. This was the place where they had to live? Two blocks from the commercial madness of East Broadway; two blocks from the filthy snout of the East River, smelling of fish, ships, and garbage; three blocks from the brain-rattling racket of the elevated train; three blocks from the playground of the Henry Street Settlement; practically in the shadow of the construction side of the twin-towered Manhattan Bridge. Every three blocks they passed more people than the entire population of Rakov. Half a million Jews packed the one and a half square miles of the Lower East Side in 1909; 702 people per acre in the densest acres. It was one of the most crowded places on earth, and all of them seemed to be swarming outdoors on the June afternoon that Gishe Sore and her family arrived. Aside from the crisscross steel girders of the Manhattan Bridge at the end of the street, it was all tenement houses as far as she could see. Tenements and bodies. In every room of every building, bodies fought for a ray of light and a sip of air. Bodies slept four to a bed and on two chairs pushed together; bodies sat hunched over sewing machines in parlors and sunless back bedrooms and at kitchen tables heaped with cloth and thread; bodies ate, slept, woke, and cleared out for the next shift of bodies to cycle through. Toilets in the hall or in courtyard outhouses; windows opening, if they opened at all, onto fetid air shafts; no privacy; no escape from the racket and smell of neighbors; no relief from summer heat or blasting winter furnaces. This was the place her American children had brought them to live?

So it was that Lavinia fired a shot against Sue’s publication. Her protest to Ward laid out the law of ownership. A writer might give a manuscript to someone else, but the possessor is not the owner. Legally, the copyright on the writing remains with writer, and upon death transfers to the writer’s heir. On the basis of Emily’s will, which left Lavinia ‘everything’, Lavinia claimed (pushing the point) that Emily had granted her exclusive rights to her papers, and though Emily gave copies of poems to others they were given simply for private reading ‘and not to pass the property in them, which is mine’. Unsurprisingly Susan challenged this. She had lost her husband to Mabel. Her friendship with Lavinia was being destroyed and now the thing she held most dear, her private relationship with Emily, was being ripped from her. She sounds a little desperate as she writes to Ward: ‘the sister is quite jealous of my treasure … All[?] [the poems and letters] I have are mine—given me by my dear Emily while living[,] so I can in honor do with them as I please.

It’s not okay to treat people that way,” I said. “It’s not okay to cut people out of your life, especially your family, because you’re too embarrassed or ashamed to take responsibility for your mistakes. It hurts them.” She didn’t move, and made no outward sign that she heard me. “They didn’t push you out, Shelly. You pushed them away. But you should know that your family loves you, and that includes me now. You have a family that will forgive you, but you have to want forgiveness. When you’re ready, when you want it, we’ll be waiting.

She has a point,” Caleb’s voice came from the shadows behind the massive Dragon who was taking all of my attention and I turned my head to find him, Seth and Max all watching this exchange with interest. That would explain the stars not smiting us or whatever other bullshit they might want to do. Though I was guessing I should really stop touching him…not that I did. “You did this to…help him?” Darius asked like he couldn’t understand why the fuck I’d do that and I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m only an asshole like, ninety percent of the time,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “The other ten percent I’m a fucking saint. So yes, I did it to help him. Turns out I only hold two members of your family in low regard.” “You pushed my brother out of a fucking window,” he growled. “I would have caught him with my air magic if I had to. Besides, this way Daddy Acrux can’t try and claim he was in on it. It’s a genius plan and you know it. Plus, your mom told me to post it so I don’t have to explain myself to you.” “Mother?” Darius scoffed. “She hardly notices anything beyond appearances. The last thing she’d encourage is a scandal like this. She-” “That’s not true, she loves you, she just…” I trailed off as the deal I’d made with Catalina stayed my tongue. I’d sworn not to tell a soul about the way I’d freed herfrom Lionel’s Dark Coercion and I wasn’t going to take even more punishment from the stars by breaking my word. “Just what?” Darius demanded. Phoenix fire burned hot beneath my skin and my palms twitched against his chest as a thought occurred to me. One I really should have considered before now if I hadn’t been so caught up with studying, the shadows, cheer practice and just plain old pining away for this monster before me to think of it. “Do you trust me?” I asked, my fingers shifting on his skin just enough to draw his attention. “Why?” “I want to try something. Something I did for your mother. But you’ll have to stay still while I do it.” Darius looked at me for a long moment and a faint tremor in the ground beneath my feet let me know that the stars had realised just how close we were to one another. Even with company they didn’t like us to touch each other, though it seemed to take them a lot longer to notice if we were. Darius exhaled angrily but his eyes shifted back as he managed to rein in some of his temper, their deep brown colour ringed with black once again. “I trust you,” he growled and the other Heirs muttered something behind him, but I didn’t care to hear it because there had been a sincerity in his words which reached out and touched my soul. He meant it. For whatever reason, despite everything we’d been through, he was still able to put his trust in me. I offered him the hint of a smile as my Phoenix fire reared up to the surface of my skin before I guided it into his flesh where I touched him. His muscles tightened beneath my hands, his eyes widening as he looked at me but he didn’t pull back, waiting as the liquid fire tore beneath his skin and sought out any signs of Lionel placing restrictions on his soul. ... “You…” Darius lifted me into his arms, staring at me with wide eyes like he didn’t even have words to explain what I’d just done for him. ,,, “She…I think she…but I don’t understand how-” “Phoenix fire burns through bullshit,” I supplied. “I just released him from every Dark Coercion spell Lionel has ever placed on him.” The Heirs all turned to stare at me like I’d just told them an alien named Clive lived up my butt and I sighed as I leaned my head back against Caleb’s shoulder. I felt like I’d just gone ten rounds in the ring against a Dragon with toothache. My eyes were hooded already and I was pretty sure that if we stood here much longer I’d fall asleep. “Thank you, Roxy,” Darius breathed and the look he was giving me made my heart do a weird squeezing kind of thing as I bit down on my bottom lip. (Tory POV)

The crowd were cheering and Geraldine led the Ass squad in that annoying as fuck song about princesses as they all celebrated her win, but I ignore them as I moved forward to offer Roxy a hand up. “I’ll toss Mildred back in her room, heal her and cast a sleeping spell on her so that she can properly recover,” Cal announced as he moved around us and I couldn’t help but smile at him. It might have annoyed the fuck out of me that he’d been with my girl, but he really was a good friend. A true brother. He threw Mildred over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and shot out of the room as Seth howled in excitement. “Come on,” I said to Roxy. “I’ll clean you up and heal those wounds.” “Okay.” Roxy followed me back to the couch and I sat her down in my spot before throwing a ring of fire and a silencing bubble up around us to give us some pretence of privacy. “Doesn’t this count as us being alone?” Roxy asked as I dropped to my knees in front of her and she pulled her busted bottom lip between her teeth. That shouldn’t have been hot, but it really fucking was. “I’m going with no,” I replied, but as the ground trembled beneath my knees I had to admit it did. “Maybe you should just-” “I’m going to look after you,” I growled, leaving no room for negotiation. “So just let me.” Her lips parted, eyes flared, fingers gripped the edge of the couch and I was sure she was about to tell me no, but instead she just nodded. I reached out and curled my fingers wound around her waist as I pressed healing magic from my skin into hers, closing my eyes so that I could concentrate. She had cracked ribs and healing bones was more difficult than damaged tissue. She fell still as I shifted my hands over her flesh and I tried to ignore the way the floor quaked beneath me. We couldn’t stay in this bubble for long, but I wished that we could. I wished we could just build a bubble where the stars couldn’t see us and stay in it forever. Although I guessed if I offered her that she’d just say no again. I sighed as my magic depleted, using the last drops of it to heal her and clean the blood from her skin after burning through so much in the game. A soft touch against my hair made me open my eyes and I looked up at her as she pushed the crown onto my head. “Mildred knocked me off of the couch first,” she explained in answer to the question in my eyes. “So you win. Besides, you need a big head like yours to pull off a crown like this.” I snorted a laugh as the ground trembled so violently that I was almost knocked back onto my ass. Roxy quickly pulled the rings and bracelets from her hands and offered them to me too and I pushed them into my pockets wordlessly. But as she reached up to unclasp the blood ruby pendant from around her neck I caught her wrist to stop her. “Keep it,” I said, my gaze slipping to the priceless heart where it lay against her flesh. Dragons didn’t give treasure away. Ever. It was inherited through the family or we bought more of it, but we never gifted it to anyone. It went against everything we stood for and the fierce possessiveness of our natures. But for some reason that I couldn’t fully comprehend, I wanted her to keep that necklace. “It looks better on you anyway.” Her eyes widened but before she could reply, I dropped the wall of fire and stepped away from her. Darcy hurried forward with wild eyes, looking between me and her sister for a long moment like she’d expected us to be arguing or something. But the last thing I was going to do was call Roxy out for beating Mildred’s ass for me. She’d absolutely been working in my interests and I wasn’t even going to pretend to be pissed about it. “Darius fixed me up like new. Did you see the bit when I kneed her in the vag?” Roxy asked as she grinned and Darcy started laughing. “It was classic, you’ve gotta come see Tyler’s slow motion footage of you punching her in the throat too!” (Darius POV)

Brittney, our firstborn, is married with three children. My husband and I are extroverts, and Brittney is an introvert. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She was shy, and I wondered how much to push her socially. My instincts told me she would eventually grow out of her shyness, and I wasn’t going to make a problem out of something that really wasn’t one. I regularly engaged her in conversation, encouraged her to talk about her ideas, her interests, her feelings, and what was going on inside, but I tried not to push. We did the things that happened naturally for our family. She attended classes once a week at a homeschool co-op, we went to church, and we got together with friends. I modeled what good conversation looks like, but I never really made it a topic of conversation because I felt it might make her self-conscious. Brittney made friends along the way. She loved drama class, and one of the reasons she enrolled in it was because she wanted to challenge herself to grow. When she was fifteen, she auditioned for and got the lead role in the spring play. Suddenly, she blossomed and took on a leadership role that defied all evidence she was an introvert at heart. She’s never been the same. She continued to grow in confidence and is a strong, gracious soul who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks when the situation calls for it. As a thirty-year-old mom who is homeschooling her kids, she tells me that pushing an introvert is the worst thing a parent can do. She believes she would never have grown so naturally into her own skin if we had not given her permission to do so at her own pace. After high school, she worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, and the patients there loved her. Not only can Brittney easily talk with people her own age, but with anyone she meets regardless of their age.

I could feel the tension leaving her as she gave in, her kisses rich and consuming as I explored her mouth with mine. I moved my hand that final inch, my thumb dragging its way up the centre of her panties until I found her clit and pressed down, making her gasp in pleasure. I began circling my thumb against her through her panties and she arched her back, her thighs widening further to give me all the access I wanted to destroy her. I kissed harder as I began to unhook her shirt buttons with my free hand, wanting to see those fucking tits I'd been jerking off over in the flesh. Her hands continued to move across my bare skin as I kept working her clit and I gave up trying to take my time with her as she started panting with need. I shifted my hand, pushing her panties aside and growling with desire as I found her pussy soaked and ready for me and I immediately sank a finger deep inside her. Tory moaned, her voice rough and breathy and so fucking sexy that I had to fight the urge to drop my pants and drive my cock into her here and now so that I could hear what it sounded like when I really made her scream. But thanks to fucking Teddy, I knew I didn't have time to fuck her the way I ached to and I didn't want to rush through something I'd been daydreaming about for so long. So I was going to feel her coming for me like this, take control of her pleasure and leave her wanting more so that she was aching for me as much as possible the next time we found ourselves alone like this and I could really show her what I was made of. My other hand found her tit and I squeezed it through her bra, groaning at the fullness in my palm and breaking our kiss as I worked my way down her body to better service her hardened nipple. Tory leaned back, giving me a perfect fucking view of her with her shirt swinging wide and her skirt hitched up around her waist as I drove my finger in and out of her tight pussy. I yanked her bra down, my dick jerking at the sight of her pink nipple before my mouth descended on it and I sucked it between my lips, coupling the move with the addition of a second finger driving inside her. She moaned even louder, her pussy tightening like a vice around my fingers while I sucked on her nipple and felt her body surging towards its climax like I was playing the most exquisite instrument in the world. The moment I felt her coming for me, I reared up and kissed her hard, swallowing her cries of pleasure and tasting her lust as I dragged my tongue over hers. My dick was fucking aching and I growled with a desperate, needy plea of my flesh which I knew I didn't have time to answer as the heat of our kisses softened and I slowly drew my fingers back out of her, fixing her panties into place again. I broke off our kiss with a surge of effort, mentally planning to give Teddy the lesson from hell for forcing me to cut this shit short after I'd waited so long to claim it. Tory blinked up at me in surprise and I had to fight the urge to pout like a bitch as I read the desire in her body and knew she'd been hoping to come all over my cock again after that stunning first round. “I have a student coming in a minute to learn the art of Vampirism from an expert,” I explained, wishing I could just cancel the damn thing, but my mom had already been calling me out on not attending a bunch of these sessions and as our family name was linked to them, it was a bad look for me to miss any more of them. “So that was purely for my benefit?” Tory asked in surprise as she began to re-button her shirt. My jaw ticked with frustration, though I couldn't claim she was the only one of us who had gotten something out of that. “Oh no, I got plenty from that too,” I promised her, my gaze sweeping over her body appreciatively as I began to mentally plan all the things I wanted to do to every inch of her if I was lucky enough to get to do this with her again. (Caleb POV)

From Brandon's perspective, this kid possessed the unique ability (it was actually more of a gift) to get under his skin. Most of us know somebody like this. Through their words, actions, and even facial expressions, they evolve into a special breed of human able to push all the right buttons needed to get you upset, angry, or frustrated. It's an irritation really, like an inward pain you can't quite locate. These people needle you non-stop until they get the response they want. For reasons unknown, they somehow gain a sort of perverse pleasure out of making you upset. They decompose you. In the process your nerves resemble the ends of a frayed rope. Come to think of it, those same people later grow up to be adults. And they don't go away, either. They work in your office, live in your neighborhood, and have children on your son's baseball team. Sometimes they even marry into your family! There is no escape from them.

Whoa, momma! Get off my girl’s man and give me a ride home before he smacks you out cold, and I have to pay for my own cab!” Ferd snatched his coat and gave me a hug. “Take care, sweety. I’ll see you Wednesday.” “Do you mind?” Charlie huffed at Ferd’s insistent shoving. “I’m not driving.” “No, I don’t mind. I’m hijacking your cab, and you’re paying!” Ferd waved at us, pushing Charlie through the door. “See you later, you beautiful bitches. Love ya!

I will send word—discreetly.” He pushed off the wall. “For my spies to keep an eye out for the Faliq family, and to aid them, should they pass their way, in any form they can to safer harbors.

The triangle of fraud . . .” “What’s that?” He started, as if I’d woken him. “Oh—incentive, opportunity, and rationalization.” He stuck out three fingers and began counting them off. “The first leg, incentive, is pressure to commit the crime. A person is looking for a way to solve their financial issues due to an inability to pay their bills, drug and/or alcohol addiction, or simply status, wanting to have a bigger house or drive a fancier car.” He counted off another finger. “The second leg is perceived opportunity, where the individual identifies ways to commit fraud with the lowest amount of risk, like lying about the number of hours worked, inflated sales or productivity to garner higher pay, creating false invoices for products never purchased and pocketing the money, or selling proprietary company information to competitors.” He counted off the last finger. “The third leg of the triangle, and this is an important one, is where individuals persuade themselves into believing that they’re doing the right thing. They convince themselves that they’re just borrowing the money or feel entitled to it through perceived low pay, uncompensated hours, lack of respect, or trying to provide for their family.” “Okay, but what pushes two men whom we assume are relatively upright individuals into going so far as to kill someone?” “A lot of money.” I laughed.

You say I didn’t push back? I was fifteen years old when Mom died. When my world was torn apart. When he fucked off and abandoned me. When he repeatedly fucked everything in a skirt. I didn’t push back because there was nothing to push back against. He didn’t give a shit about me and carried on showing me that every single time he let me catch him fucking someone else. “So I stopped giving a shit too. None of you backed me up. Not one of you. That was when I got the bro code. It finally stuck in my head, and I realized you were always going to back him over me.” I tipped my chin up. “We’re family. I know you’ll kill for me, but you didn’t give a shit that he was killing me from the inside out.

She found herself speaking through clenched teeth. “He’s blind, you hear me? The world’s all jade beds and silk sheets for him. He’s never seen how ugly it gets. He doesn’t know.” He’d been mistreated by his clan, that was true. But he’d never fought for his own life. He’d never clawed his way out of a pile of bodies until he was elbow-deep in blood. He’d never woken to find that his only family was dead…and pushed through that crushing weight to draw his sword anyway. Eithan leaned one shoulder against the wall, considering her. “What do you think I’m trying to teach him?” Suddenly, he sounded just like her master. It brought up memories she’d just as soon have left buried. A white forest, long ago. A ring of swords in the snow.

The snake was an ancient symbol of the traditions which honored the Goddess and the Divine Feminine. You will see Her in ancient forms of the uroboros, a symbol of a snake that looks like it chases its tail or eats its tail. It is a symbol of the ability of the Divine Feminine to give birth and to be reborn like the snake that sheds its skin. She recreates herself for ever. The circular form of the uroboros symbol implies the interminable nature of many cycles. That was part of the Divine Feminine's wisdom, knowing the life cycles, being informed by them and living in harmony with them. Some of the Divine Feminine's mysteries were understood to be impenetrable, and it was only by the Goddess ' grace that one could enter the mysteries, that darkness, and acquire direct knowledge that the ordinary mind and ordinary words would never illuminate or touch. The Goddess gave the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and this did not like the dominating form of a male god! As a quintessential form of the Divine Feminine power of consciousness, Goddess Kundalini has been touched by those dominating modes that have influenced the development of yogic traditions. In the yogic traditions, there have been approaches that try to dominate Kundalini, forcefully push Kundalini to do this or do that by prescribing endless exercises of forced breathing and body postures that are meant to bind and force Kundalini to go in a direction that the yogi wants Her to go. Not surprisingly, these traditions are also the ones that often say Kundalini is dangerous and must be controlled. Those were also the kinds of descriptions that patriarchal dominator approaches applied to the Divine Feminine. But this power of Consciousness is indomitable, it will not be suppressed; it will always have its ways out. Through respect, love, and loyalty, the wise try to follow Her, and then they receive the good graces of this force. Devotees who consider Kundalini as the Great Goddess have a completely different experience with their caring devotion. They gain their boons, their gifts of enlightenment, without having to fear what some forceful, dominant practice may provoke. That mentality is key to understanding how we accept the blessings to be given by this remarkable inherent force of consciousness. It doesn't mean our karmas experiences in flames might not be intense. But with eager egotistical mentality there is no need to escalate issues. We are living in a time of the Goddess's return. We need her experience to educate and encourage mankind to relive cooperatively if life is to exist on this planet. We need her vision clarity, her deep compassion and her steadfast patience to live in harmony with each other and the environment. We need Kundalini Shakti's awakened state of selflessness, empowering people to reinvent culture, social structures, industries, and economic systems on a cooperative model rather than the dominant mode that brings about destruction and conflict. The more people She awakens, the more individuals there will transform the collective consciousness of families, groups, cities, businesses and countries. We are her perceptive and acting organs. We may see clearly, encouraged by Her, and act accordingly.

Companies don't want anyone telling them how to deal with their workers  -- they never have; they never will. Stores don't want anyone telling them how to design their entrances; how many steps they can have (or can't have); how heavy their doors can be. Yet they accept their city's building and fire codes, dictating to them how many people they can have in their restaurants, based on square footage, so that the place will not be a fire hazard. They accept that the city can inspect their electrical wiring to ensure that it "meets code" before they open for business. Yet they chafe if an individual wants an accommodation. Because, it seems, it is seen as "special for the handicapped," most of whom likely don't deserve it. Accommodation is fought doubly hard when it is seen to be a way of letting "the disabled" have a part of what we believe is for "normal" people. Although no access code, anywhere, requires them, automatic doors remain the one thing, besides flat or ramped entrances, that one hears about most from people with mobility problems: they need automatic doors as well as flat entrances. Yet no code, anywhere, includes them; mandating them would be "going too far"; giving the disabled more than they have a right to. A ramp is OK. An automatic door? That isn't reasonable. At least that's what the building lobby says. Few disability rights groups, anywhere, have tried to push for that accommodation. Some wheelchair activists are now pressing for "basic, minimal access" in all new single-family housing, so, they say, they can visit friends and attend gatherings in others' homes. This means at least one flat entrance and a bathroom they can get into. De-medicalization No large grocery or hotel firm, no home-and-garden discount supply center would consider designing an entrance that did not include automatic doors. They are standard in hotels and discount warehouses. Not, of course, for the people who literally can not open doors by themselves  -- for such people are "the disabled": them, not us. Firms that operate hotels, groceries and building supply stores fight regulations that require they accommodate "the disabled." Automatic doors that go in uncomplainingly are meant for us, the fit, the nondisabled, to ensure that we will continue to shop at the grocery or building supply center; to make it easy for us to get our grocery carts out, our lumber dollies to our truck loaded with Sheetrock for the weekend project. So the bellhops can get the luggage in and out of the hotel easily. When it is for "them," it is resisted; when it is for "us," however, it is seen as a design improvement. Same item; different purpose

If you sell someone a prime-rate, 5 percent annual percentage rate (APR) thirty-year mortgage in the amount of $200,000, they’ll pay you back an additional $186,512—93 percent of what they borrowed—for the privilege of spreading payments out over thirty years. If you can manage to sell that same person a subprime loan with a 9 percent interest rate, you can collect $379,328 on top of the $200,000 repayment, nearly twice over what they borrowed. The public policy justification for allowing subprime loans was that they made the American Dream of homeownership possible for people who did not meet the credit standards to get a cheaper prime mortgage. But the subprime loans we started to see in the early 2000s were primarily marketed to existing homeowners, not people looking to buy—and they usually left the borrower worse off than before the loan. Instead of getting striving people into homeownership, the loans often wound up pushing existing homeowners out. The refinance loans stripped homeowners of equity they had built up over years of mortgage payments. That’s why these diseased loans were tested first on the segment of Americans least respected by the financial sector and least protected by lawmakers: Black and brown families.

We are not sure that this particular trap has a name, but it is familiar to everyone. Let’s call it the “while we are at it” bias. Home improvement projects are often settings where this bias is observed. A family decides that after twenty years of neglect, the kitchen really needs to be upgraded. The initial to-do list includes new appliances and cabinets, but of course, the floor will be ruined during the construction, so we’d better replace that, and gosh, if we just pushed that wall out a bit, we could add a new window, which looks out on the patio, but oh dear, who wants to look at that patio . . . In the military this is called mission creep. Here we plead guilty to book revision creep. The revision that we planned to knock off during the summer was not given to the publisher until late November.

special acknowledgments 1. my sun & rain, who believed i could write this even when i didn't. 1. my father, who probably didn't know i was a writer but will hopefully be proud of me for writing this. 1. my sister-savior, who wouldn't imagine giving up on me even in the darkest of times. 1. the rest of my family, who always encouraged me to keep moving forward even if it meant pushing me out of my comfort zone. 1. my beta readers (christine, mira, danika, shauna, rob, mason & lauren), who cried while reading this & — most importantly — pointed out my inconsistencies & corrected most of my grammar mistakes.

Rhys looked them each in the eye, even my sisters, his hand brushing the back of my own. “Do you want the inspiring talk or the bleak one?” he asked. “We want the real one,” Amren said. Rhys pushed his shoulders back, elegantly folding his wings behind him. “I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, or the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don’t know. I don’t really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn’t … I might have become as awful as that prick we’re going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training,” he said to Cassian, “I would not have known the true depths of strength, of resilience, of honor and loyalty.” Cassian’s eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, “If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.” Azriel bowed his head in thanks. Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. “If I had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.” She wiped away her tears as she nodded. I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting. Rhys bowed his head to her. “If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake …” A quiet laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. “My own power would have consumed me long ago.” Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. “And if I had not met my mate …” His words failed him as silver lined his eyes. He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have … The wait was worth it. He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. “I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to … so I could find you.” He kissed another tear away. And then he said to my sisters, “We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we’ll find out why.

That's the work,' Regina says. "To push your friends, your family, your co-workers. Not to sit in silence thinking, but actually voicing your convictions. Out loud. In the moment.

There was always a chance somebody would say, “Well, he died. The cat took an O.D.,” an overdose of heroin; or he was pushed out of a window trying to rob somebody’s apartment, or shot five times trying to stick up a place to get some money for drugs. Drugs were killing just about everybody off in one way or another. It had taken over the neighborhood, the entire community. I didn’t know of one family in Harlem with three or more kids between the ages of fourteen and nineteen in which at least one of them wasn’t on drugs. This was just how it was.

And we're cheerful, too. You can count on that.' Obligingly she smiled in a neighbourly way at him. 'It will be a relief to leave Earth with its repressive legislation. We were listening OH the FM to the news about the McPhearson Act.' 'We consider it dreadful,' the adult male said. 'I have to agree with you,' Chic said. 'But what can one do?' He looked around for the mail; as always it was lost somewhere in the mass of clutter. 'One can emigrate,' the adult male simulacrum pointed out. 'Um,' Chic said absently. He had found an unexpected heap of recent-looking bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to sort through them. Had Maury seen these? Probably. Seen them and then pushed them away immediately, out of sight. Frauenzimmer Associates functioned better if it was not reminded of such facts of life. Like a regressed neurotic, it had to hide several aspects of reality from its percept system in order to function at all. This was hardly ideal, but what really was the alternative? To be realistic would be to give up, to die. Illusion, of an infantile nature was essential for the tiny firm's survival, or at least so it seemed to him and Maury. In any case both of them had adopted this attitude. Their simulacra -- the adult ones -- disapproved of this; their cold, logical appraisal of reality stood in sharp contrast, and Chic always felt a little naked, a little embarrassed, before the simulacra; he knew he should set a better example for them. 'If you bought a jalopy and emigrated to Mars,' the adult male said, 'We could be the famnexdo for you.' 'I wouldn't need any family next-door,' Chic said, 'if I emigrated to Mars. I'd go to get away from people. 'We'd make a very good family next-door to you,' the female said. 'Look,' Chic said, 'you don't have to lecture me about your virtues. I know more than you do yourselves.' And for good reason. Their presumption, their earnest sincerity, amused but also irked him. As next-door neighbours this group of sims would be something of a nuisance, he reflected. Still, that was what emigrants wanted, in fact needed, out in the sparsely-populated colonial regions. He could appreciate that; after all, it was Frauenzimmer Associates' business to understand. A man, when he emigrated, could buy neighbours, buy the simulated presence of life, the sound and motion of human activity -- or at least its ​mechanical nearsubstitute to bolster his morale in the new environment of unfamiliar stimuli and perhaps, god forbid, no stimuli at all. And in addition to this primary psychological gain there was a practical secondary advantage as well. The famnexdo group of simulacra developed the parcel of land, tilled it and planted it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the human settler because the famnexdo group, legally speaking, occupied the peripheral portions of his land. The famnexdo were actually not next-door at all; they were part of their owner's entourage. Communication with them was in essence a circular dialogue with oneself; the famnexdo, it they were functioning properly, picked up the covert hopes and dreams of the settler and detailed them back in an articulated fashion. Therapeutically, this was helpful, although from a cultural standpoint it was a trifle sterile.

I pushed aside all thoughts of my family just so I could keep going, but it was like trying to hold back the sea. Try as I might, the waves kept crashing down on my head and swallowing me up. Eventually, when I had all but drowned, I realised that by pushing the memory of my family away, I was slowly erasing them. It was the last thing I wanted, so I made a change. When I accepted my pain instead of trying to block it out, and I allowed myself to remember their faces, my family returned to me. I’ve been carrying them with me ever since.

These scripts are appropriate for straightforward interactions and binary yes/no decisions: “May I take twenty-four hours to get back to you?” Buy yourself time to work the Hourglass. When the interpersonal contact is broken, the intellect engages, better equipping you to make rational decisions. “I can do it for you this time, but I can’t do it for you every time.” Ease a demanding person back slowly from their expectations, and set up a future no. “It does not (or will not) work for me to . . .” This clause is a marvelous neutral beginning to any no. Be cautious of harshness in your tone. “I can’t, but here is another option for you.” (No, plus a substitute.) Share an alternative or suggestion in place of your being able to help. “It’s not good for me now, but let’s look ahead in our calendars.” (Yes, but in the future.) Be careful you’re not using a delay to avoid a necessary no. Of course, if timing is really the issue, then push the commitment back. “Sweetie, please take the no.” To use with children asking for the forty-third time if they can do or have something. “Mother/sister/brother/honey, I’m going to give that one a pass.” Use this easy phrase with family to practice no when the stakes are low. “Thanks for your directness.” A phrase to use when you’re on the other side of the no. “Sorry, no.” Yes, it’s a complete sentence. Get it out and then say nothing more.

Going through the rest of the budget from Falcon Plastics is stressing me out. Who am I to decide which charities and organizations need it more than others? Charlie stopped by half an hour ago to find me all but hyperventilating. He asked what the problem was. That was about the time Alexa the Freak-Out Chick pushed her way out of my brain by means of my mouth. “There’s not a lot of money left, Charlie, and I thought this would be easy, you know? Giving money out to people who need it like Robin Hood. Which makes you a member of my merry men. And that’s fine, because you’re like this huge Islander teddy bear, so people would be scared of you and have no idea that you’re a sweetheart, but as a member of my merry men, I have to ask you to take this burden away from me. Because it’s a lot of burden. And I’m only human, Charlie.” I looked up into his eyes in pleading. “I don’t like being Robin Hood. Please don’t make me wear tights.

She doesn’t react; she just keeps floating, staring up at the velvet night. “You’re a good guy, Beau. But you’re kind of out of touch.” “Come again?” “Do you know how many people out there do jobs they don’t like? Or are bored with their profession? They get up and go do a job they hate with every fiber of their being because they depend on that paycheck to live. They don’t have a supportive family and a beautiful house to fall back on. That’s real life. Being a shitty employee and unreliable at the job you said you’d do because it bores you . . .” She moves to standing, reaching up to push her hair away from her face. “That’s a privilege. Recognize it.

Sam had come over from the fireplace to stand beside us. My heart began bucking like a stallion and I looked at Cecelia, then up at Sam, the proud father beaming down at his boy, his face full of love. Everything went dim. For seven years, I’d hunted this man the length and breadth of our Republic, and now I stood up, putting a hand on the table top to steady myself, knocking over my stool in the process. “Are you poorly?” Sam asked. He nodded at the far side of the room to a sunken bed—likely the very bed where he and Cecelia had conceived this baby boy—and said, “Lie down a minute.” Well, that was the last feather. I turned and stumbled out the door. Outside, the autumn sun was blinding. My mare grazed in a patch of grass, and I walked her down and mounted up. I felt old of a sudden, very old. Sam was in the doorway now and he called something to me. I wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t show my pitiful face. I walked my horse back along the cow path and pushed up to a trot. Directly, we commenced to burn the breeze, the leaves blurring by. I did not feel betrayed: let me say that right out. Rather, I felt that the hard hand of the Lord had swung down to swat me a final blow. And I deserved it. I’d done everything to beg Him for such a slap—all my lust and foolishness—and for some strange reason, I began to laugh. Or, it was laughter that came out of me. It didn’t seem to be me who was doing it—certainly, there was nothing amusing. I felt like He had borrowed my mouth, just like He’d borrowed that of Balaam’s ass, that the Lord Himself was laughing, and I thought of my father all those years ago, riding Young Roger through the Kentucky forest to find me and Tom Yarbrough bached up together. The laughter died away, and I began weeping as my father had wept decades before, and now I understood. It hadn’t been out of shame as I’d supposed, but rather, my father had seen this very moment coming for me. He’d known if I pursued my heart’s desire, I’d find myself galloping through a wilderness in an unfamiliar land, an old man without home or family, learning at long last how all things end in judgment.

I saw them worthy enough of pushing them out of the dark hole that I was in, while they never saw me worthy of being lifted out.

Alastor Abbott was my father by blood. My parents couldn’t have any more children and were the perfect family to receive such a generous donation from a dead woman. A son who wanted out of the faith, a baby girl they could mold with deceptive lies in order to control. Just like they did Aero’s mother, they killed mine in cold blood, brushing yet another life under the rug, and gave me to prestigious members of the church. The same parents who Baret has discovered conveniently took that mission trip in order to disappear, sanctioning the order of the church to take care of the dark stain themselves. The stain that pushed too far, seeking more for herself in a world that demanded its sheep shut up and abide. I was always a threat to them, just as he was. Out of their control. An outsider. A stray who’d developed the intelligence to see from beyond the confines of an organized religion built on deceptive rules. Aero was right. They never wanted me. They wanted obedience to keep the train of deceitful power in motion.

didn’t have your love of the land, your work ethic, your sense of adventure, your devotion to your family. They didn’t understand me the way you did. They didn’t push my buttons, they couldn’t give me a stupid nickname like Squeegee and make it sound like the most tender endearment.” “You couldn’t talk them into jumping from the top barn beam?” She snorted. “That too.” “They didn’t quit talking to you when you broke their leg?” “I did not break your leg. You—” His phone buzzed again, and she remembered that she’d never looked at it to begin with. She held it up. “It’s from your sister.” Half of the message was cut off, so she pressed the button and entered his password. It was the same as hers: Tella’s birthdate. They’d gotten their first phones about the same time she was born. Ames still remembered sitting in the hospital waiting to go in to see Louise and Tella, Palmer and her trying to figure out the newfangled technology together, wondering what a good password would be. She’d had three or four phones since. Palmer hadn’t been around when she’d gotten any of them, and now she used her thumbprint to open it most of the time, but her numerical passcode had stayed the same on all of them. Palmer’s phone opened. Apparently his had too. She pulled Louise’s text up and read it out loud. “‘Pap fell. He’s coherent but wobbly. I think he might have had another stroke. I’m taking him to the hospital in Rockerton. Gram and Tella are with me. The stock is fed for tonight, but the waterer in the far corner pasture is leaking.’” Palmer’s jaw set. His finger tapped the steering wheel. Ames set his phone down and put her hand on his leg. He jumped a little, and his mouth turned up, despite the worried look on his face. That slow grin that made her heart do cartwheels spread across his face. “I can get used to this,” Palmer said, looking at her hand before

Cal decided he would push those girls out of the wagon if he had to, and maybe he’d leave Norah here too.

First, the goal was to extend the definition of marriage to include a legal connection between two people of the same sex, not to push the State out of the business of validating familial relationships. People recognize the power of the State and wanted access to the social benefits that such legal acceptance of their relationships provided.

Idropped Eriko off to her host family on the way home, proudly resisting the urge to push her out of the van while it was still moving. I was definitely growing as a person.

At the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, there are mirrors but, because of the tone of the place, they seem more flirty than licentious. An attractive man glanced at me with a smile and said cutely, Now I can’t go. Soon after, I saw him on the dance floor, whispering to his friend and nodding at me. We all knew he still had to pee. Fleeting, gently pervy interactions like that may be the closest I get to experiencing a sense of gay community. It was last call at the RVT. Famous stole away to the toilets. ‘Family Affair’ by Mary J. Blige began to play—a song meant for the start of the night. I danced on my own by the door, near the shelf of condoms and literature. I recalled another time I’d been there recently. I’d given my coat check ticket to the most boyish and poised of the bartenders, the one who moves with a distinct admixture of flirtatiousness and efficiency. He brought my jacket from the cloakroom, the blue nylon I wear when I predict I’ll end up going out, because it promises to wipe clean easily. About to hand it to me over the bar, he said, You know what…and brought himself around the hatch, with shoulders alert like a pantomime butler. He held up my jacket with alacrity to indicate I should turn around so he could slip me into it. I momentarily forgot that I don’t smile in gay bars. He both served and took the upper hand: to get into the jacket, I had to turn my back to him, and yet into the sleeves it was I who inserted. I submitted, but he received. On this night, I glanced over and saw that the bartender was busy, holding someone else’s attention in a brief exchange. He fetched them their extraneous last drink. Famous bounced forth. I caught his eye and pointed my index finger to the speakers. This song, I mouthed. Famous tilted his head. We pushed through the doors into the wind. I’d put my jacket on myself this time, without ceremony. But leaving on a good song also makes a fine exit. Mary J. Blige sang at our backs about starting the party as we took long strides down the street.

NASA engineers and technicians at the Cape were pushing themselves so hard in the final weeks people had to be ordered home to rest. It was a grueling time and yet the sort of interlude of adrenal exhilaration that men remember all their lives. It was an interlude of the dedication of body and soul to a cause such as men usually experience only during war. Well … this was war, even though no one had spelled it out in just that way. Without knowing it, they were caught up in the primordial spirit of single combat. Just days from now one of the lads would be up on top of the rocket for real. Everyone felt he had the life of the astronaut, whichever was chosen (only a few knew), in his hands. The MA–1 explosion here at the Cape nine months ago had been a chilling experience, even for veterans of flight test. The seven astronauts had been assembled for the event, partly to give them confidence in the new system. And their gullets had been stuck up toward the sky like everybody else’s, when the whole assembly blew to bits over their heads. In a few days one of those very lads would be lying on top of a rocket (albeit a Redstone, not an Atlas) when the candle was lit. Just about everybody here in NASA had seen the boys close up. NASA was like a family that way. Ever since the end of the Second World War the phrase “government bureaucracy” had invariably provoked sniggers. But a bureaucracy was nothing more than a machine for communal work, after all, and in those grueling and gorgeous weeks of the spring of 1961 the men and women of NASA’s Space Task Group for Project Mercury knew that bureaucracy, when coupled with a spiritual motivation, in this case true patriotism and profound concern for the life of the single-combat warrior himself—bureaucracy, poor gross hideously ridiculed twentieth-century bureaucracy, could take on the aura, even the ecstasy, of communion. The passion that now animated NASA spread out even into the surrounding community of Cocoa Beach. The grisliest down-home alligator-poaching crackers manning the gasoline pumps on Route A1A would say to the tourists, as the No-Knock flowed, “Well, that Atlas vehicle’s given us more fits than a June bug on a porch bulb, but we got real confidence in that Redstone, and I think we’re gonna make it.” Everyone who felt the spirit of NASA at that time wanted to be part of it. It took on a religious dimension that engineers, no less than pilots, would resist putting into words. But all felt it.

I’m on my period,” I tell him. “We can’t have bathroom sex.” “I know. We heard you girls.” “You heard …?” My voice trails off when I realize what he means. Narrowing my eyes, I demand. “Were you in the men’s bathroom with the Kings?” The rooms share a wall. I didn’t hear them, but I wasn’t really listening either. Now I know it’s because after they were beating the shit out of some guy, they were spying on us. He doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t have to. I already know that answer. “You had no right …” “You should have told me you thought you were pregnant,” he snaps. “Why? To push you away?” He lets out a long sigh and steps into me. Cupping my cheeks, he frowns. “You think I’d leave you?” “The thought crossed my mind,” I admit softly. I’ve taken five pregnancy tests, and they all said negative, but none of them helped ease my fear. What my mom would say. How I would tell him. It has consumed my every thought. I think to the point that I was convincing my body I was growing a baby. The stress alone probably kept me from starting. “Haven, I’m never going to leave you.” He pulls me into him. “I just wish you would have told me. My job is to take care of you. And if we get pregnant, then I’ll take care of both of you.” “If we get pregnant?” I arch a brow. “Of course. You’re not alone in this relationship, Haven.” I went that very next day to get on the shot. I told my mother about my pregnancy scare and that I had missed some pills, so I chose the shot instead. I wonder how long I’ll be able to keep getting them. “I didn’t read the contract,” I blurt out. I need him to understand that I don’t know all that is required of me. He stays silent, but he’s no longer snoring, so I know I woke him up. “I do love you,” I whisper. “And I’d love to have a family with you, but I won’t allow you to harm any child of mine.” He shifts, and I close my eyes. “Haven. Haven, look at me,” he orders, placing his hand on my face to tilt it toward him. I open my eyes, and they sting from unshed tears. “I may be my father’s son, but I’m nothing like him. I don’t want my parents’ marriage. And I would never, ever hurt you or our children.” He presses his lips gently to my forehead, and the first tear rolls down the side of my face.

Amnon went with it. When his half sister came in to cook for him, he said to her, “Tell the servants we won’t be needing them this evening.” Then he instructed her to come to the bedroom and feed him the bread. What happened next is heartbreaking. He pushed the food aside and declared what was on his mind. She resisted. She pled for him to think about what he was doing, to think about the disgrace it would inflict upon her and his own reputation. The Bible says, “But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her” (2 Samuel 13:14). Tamar did what the people of her time did to demonstrate great mourning and suffering. She put ashes on her head and tore the beautiful robe she was wearing. These actions also symbolized her loss of virginity. She left weeping and broken. Amnon’s sexual sin brought incredible destruction and devastation, not just upon his family but on the entire nation. The disruption to a royal family means disruption to a country. Everything spiraled wildly out of control.

Fair enough." She lowered her knees, stared down as she buttoned her shirt again. "Ty, I'm really sorry. I'd never do anything to upset Eli, or to cause trouble between the two of you." "I know." He pushed to his feet and after a brief hesitation held out his hand to help her up. "I want to make love with you." His already jangled system suffered. "I think what we both want's pretty clear. I just don't know what we're going to do about it. I have to go after him." "Yes.

I was given a copy of this book by Author S.K. Ballinger. It did have some edits that needs to be fixed, but the story line was so intriguing that I could not put it down. The characters were brought to life very well & it made it easy to get to know each of them. The details were so on target that it was like watching a movie in my head. For those of you that haven't read this book, it's a different approach for werewolves. I don't want to give anything away, but Stan & Kain are some awesome characters that I believe everyone should get to know. When reading a book that was put together this well that you can't put it down, it makes me wonder why I haven't heard of this author before & why it's not on film for everyone's viewing pleasure. It's not very often that I find a book like this that I really care about pushing it out there, so those of you that know me will know it must be good. S.K. Ballinger is a great man & a family man. I've never met him in person, but he's definitely got enough heart for everyone to push him to the top. So I urge everyone to spread this name around & most definitely this book, because I'm sure we haven't heard the last out of him. I would hope to see a lot more coming in the near future. Even with the edits, I give this book 5 stars! Check it out on amazon

He's an exceedingly polite person. I don't push too hard with Bill and I think he respects that. When I was editing [his novel] The Royal Family I thought there were perhaps fifteen too many scenes in bars with prostitutes, but that was really the point of the book. So he cut two or three of them out.

GoPro is essentially a lifestyle company more than a camera company. It relies on early adopters to live up to its marketing promises, at least enough to convince the larger market of nonextreme consumers that it’s possible that we too could “be a hero” and “go Pro.” Their exploits make GoPro seem an opportune investment for the once-a-year vacation surfer who wants to ensure that the evidence of their own occasional daring will stand out. It’s a consumer-aggrandizing ad approach perfected by the likes of Mountain Dew and Monster Energy. Only in GoPro’s case, the product actually creates the marketing materials. But for GoPro to sustain its meteoric rise, the company cannot remain relegated to extreme sports for long. To continue to grow the company will have to try to expand the meaning of heroism. The cameras won’t stay on surfboards and mountain bikes for long. The company is already featuring family footage, concerts, and more on YouTube, pushing its lenses into the everyday. The founder has filmed the birth of his baby with a GoPro strapped to his head.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. —1 John 4:7 (NIV) I’ve always been something of a loner. In middle school, I preferred a good fantasy novel to time on the playground, and in college, I often chose to do homework or watch a movie rather than spend time with friends. Even at church, I chose to sit in pews toward the back, where I could pray alone. Sometimes my desire to be on my own was so strong that I would snap at people just to get them to leave me alone. I’d like to say all that changed when I met Emily; that her warmth and beauty opened my heart so wide I couldn’t hold it in any longer. But it didn’t; at least not at first. It took weeks of hanging out together before I worked up the courage to ask her out, and even when we started dating, I still found myself drawing away. After a night where I raised my voice at Emily for simply asking if we could have dinner together, I knew I had to change. Not only was I endangering the most important relationship in my life, but I wasn’t living by Christ’s precept to love and care for one another. I didn’t become a new person overnight. It took months of work and prayer to stop pushing Emily away. Ultimately, I had to accept that I wanted to watch her laugh as much as anything on earth—and I would change, in any way necessary, to protect and keep her in my life with God’s help. My relationship with Emily—and my family and friends—is ongoing…. Thank You, Lord, for always leaving Your heart open for me, thereby teaching me to open my heart to others. —Sam Adriance Digging Deeper: 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 2:20

In America, my father began working as a clerk for a government agency. He rented an apartment in a place called Queens, New York. A year after he left us, he sent airplane tickets. The Delhi of the seventies is hard to imagine: the quietness, the streets empty of traffic, children playing cricket in the middle of the street and rarely having to move out of the way to let cars by, the vegetable vendors who came pushing their carts down the streets in the late afternoon, crying out their wares in tight, high-pitched voices. There weren't VCRs back then, let alone cable channels. A movie would play for twenty-five or fifty weeks in huge auditorium theaters, and then once the movie was gone, it was gone forever. I remembered feeling grief when the enormous billboards for Sholay at the end of our street were taken down. It was like somebody had died. It is also hard to remember how frugal we were. We saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. Our mothers used it to make wicks. This frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of the world in a way most people no longer are. When my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. When we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. This close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper split on paper slows down how it burns. By the time our airplane tickets arrived, not every family hired a band to play outside their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country. Still, many families did.

For all the Clintons’ repeated scandals, they blamed everybody except themselves. Every time I heard the Clintons blame the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” the Uniformed Division, the agents on their personal details, their staff persons, the media, and others, I realized how glad I was to have gotten out of their White House when I did. I got out too late, but still mostly unscathed. I could still provide for my family, and by God’s graces and a few men of real character, I remained on the job and became an instructor. That semen-stained blue dress saved our lives, one way or the other, in the media or from the Clinton Machine’s ire. I watched as the president continued to bash the Secret Service and the Uniformed Division on how “inappropriate” it was to reveal whom the president met with. Yes, we had, but he was so wildly beyond protocol and sowing discord among us for so long that he had no business judging an officer’s character when his own mistress showed up to the White House for her booty call. The machine pushed me out, it pissed off Tripp, it pissed off the Fox, and it jeopardized the character and integrity of the presidency in so many ways. The Clintons never had our backs; they were on it. He demeaningly referred to us as “these uniform people.