Raised By Grandmother Quotes

Hazel squinted. "How far?" "Just over the river and through the woods." Percy raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? To Grandmother's house we go?" Frank cleared his throat. "Yeah, anyway.

I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother sitting by the bank of a swimming pool, that was also a river. In real life, she had been a victim of Alzheimer’s disease, and had regressed, before her death, to a semi-conscious state. In the dream, as well, she had lost her capacity for self-control. Her genital region was exposed, dimly; it had the appearance of a thick mat of hair. She was stroking herself, absent-mindedly. She walked over to me, with a handful of pubic hair, compacted into something resembling a large artist’s paint-brush. She pushed this at my face. I raised my arm, several times, to deflect her hand; finally, unwilling to hurt her, or interfere with her any farther, I let her have her way. She stroked my face with the brush, gently, and said, like a child, “isn’t it soft?” I looked at her ruined face and said, “yes, Grandma, it’s soft.

You make all your mistakes with your own children so by the time your grandchildren arrive, you know how to get it right. Plus, once you turn fifty, you kind of stop giving a shit what others think.

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

True to the precepts handed down to her by her mother and grandmother—to wit: that a true lady can neither be shocked nor surprised—Miss Marple merely raised her eyebrows and shook her head,

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

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

Whenever he cried, his grandmother would always tell him, You need a backbone, boy. She thought this was the way to raise a man-child without quite understanding that sometimes it takes backbone to cry the long length of tears required.

My mother came into the kitchen. "Whose car is that parked in front of our house?" "That's Stephanie's new car," Grandma said. "Isn't it a pip?" One of my mother's eyebrows raised in question. "Two new cars? Where are these cars coming from?" "Company cars," I said. "Oh?" "Anal sex is not involved," I told her. My mother and grandmother both gasped. "Sorry," I said. "It just slipped out." "I thought only homosexual men did anal sex," Grandma said. "Anybody with an anus can do it," I told her. "Hmm," she said. "I got one of them.

She raised her sad blue eyes to mine. "It's going to be so boring here without you. And I'm going to have to deal with Grandmother on my own! You need to e-mail, text, call, send smoke signals--whatever--and tell me everything you're doing." I laughed. "Yes, I know. Every day. I promise.

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

One of the biggest, baddest, most relentless, and best-known alpha males in American history was a woman: the writer Ayn Rand. I have raised my children to be as unlike her as possible.

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

Don't go thinking you can bounce me all over the ground just because I look like somebody's grandmother," the woman said dryly. "Some grandchildren need more raising than others, and I supply it," she grinned, showing very white teeth. -- Esa Bell, Shang Wildcat

I could do worse than become my own grandma, or anyone of the strong women who raised us. Our strengths emerged from theirs; we build on their heritage and transform their resilience and competence into our own.

You know what you need?" Giguhl said. I raised a brow, bracing myself for a punch line. "A to-do list. Might help you keep track of all the beings who want you dead and the satanic birdlife you've kidnapped." I imagined a list in my head: 1. Perform voodoo ritual on evil owl. 2. Find out who sold us out to the anachronistic Caste vampires. 3. Make amends with a lesbian werewolf. 4. Rescue twin. 5. Murder grandmother. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. "Yeah, I'll get right on that." Gighul heard the sarcasm. "Suit yourself, but don't come crying to me if you forget who you're supposed to kill when.

Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons.

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

Mother Nature, mothers, grandmothers - yes, even fathers, and grandfathers - are the best doctors around, because they do not share the typical doctor's compulsion to interfere with the body's efforts and ability to heal itself.

Raised to believe that her life would be, as her great-grandmother's was said to have been, one ceaseless round of fixed and settled principles, aims, motives, and activity, she could sometimes think of nothing to do but walk downtown, check out the Bon Marche for clothes she could not afford, buy a cracked crab for dinner and take a taxi home.

Mothers, Grandmothers, and Mother Nature are the best doctors around.

And ‘woman’ in the slums is capable of taking on almost superhuman responsibility, from a very young age, that would crush most of us. Today they live in luxury — look at all the giddy young girls around us — they have no memory of how their mothers and grandmothers lived and died. They have no understanding of what it took to raise a family twenty or thirty years ago.

I'd long wondered if I were really a civilized person, though I kept striving to be one. I knew that at the moment I'd said I would take care of Lorena myself, I had meant it. There was something pretty savage inside me, and I'd always controlled it. My grandmother had not raised me to be a murderess.

My grandmother got sick, the woman that raised me and she was kind of my world, the only person that mattered to me. She made me promise her that I would get an education and, stop being an idiot basically.

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

God, I was just six years older than you are now. That’s terrifying.” She raised her shoulder, nudging my head. “Please don’t make me a grandmother in six years, okay?” I scoffed. “Trust me, after the Boy Issues I’ve had, I’m becoming a nun.” “Well, that’s good to know.” We stayed there, dangling our feet over the creek, talking, until the sun was high overhead. By the time we made our way back to the compound, I was feeling a little better. Sure, my life was still intensely screwed up, but at least I had some answers.

I slammed the door shut before we had a cold buffet in the front corridor. The shouts grew louder, denied their target. If I had better aim I'd have opened the door and tossed it all right back at them. But with my luck I'd hit the sleeping baby or an innocent old grandmother out for her morning constitution. And then we'd be dragged through the streets for certain. Dread uncurled in the pit of my stomach. "Is that cabbage?" Colin asked, coming out of the dining room. Listening to the raised voices, he reached for the doorknob, frowning. I caught his hand. "Don't." "Whyever not?" I raised an eyebrow. "You'll get a rotted meat tart in the eye for your trouble,that's why.

My grandmother’s house is right over there.” Hazel squinted. “How far?” “Just over the river and through the woods.” Percy raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? To Grandmother’s house we go?

Hazel squinted. “How far?” “Just over the river and through the woods.” Percy raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? To Grandmother’s house we go?” Frank cleared his throat. “Yeah, anyway.” Hazel clasped her hands in prayer. “Frank, please tell me she’ll let us spend the night. I know we’re on a deadline, but we’ve got to rest, right? And Arion saved us some time. Maybe we could get an actual cooked meal?” “And a hot shower?” Percy pleaded. “And a bed with, like, sheets and a pillow?” Frank tried to imagine Grandmother’s face if he showed up with two heavily armed friends and a harpy. Everything had changed since his mother’s funeral, since the morning the wolves had taken him south. He’d been so angry about leaving. Now, he couldn’t imagine going back. Still, he and his friends were exhausted. They’d been traveling for more than two days without decent food or sleep. Grandmother could give them supplies. And maybe she could answer some questions that were brewing in the back of Frank’s mind—a growing suspicion about his family gift. “It’s worth a try,” Frank decided. “To Grandmother’s house we go.” Frank was so distracted, he would have walked right into the ogres’ camp. Fortunately Percy pulled him back.

As a book, Gertie grapples with the lingering legacies of slavery, the noxious institution which had only been prohibited a generation before her birth. Her paternal grandmother and great-grandmother were born into slavery. They attempt to raise Gertie to have the mentality of a slave, but the young child will rebel at every turn. In many ways, the book can be read as a riposte to Alex Haley’s acclaimed Roots, but told from a female point of view.

Nothing I could come up with would have raised even an iota of eyebrow from investigators who are used to finding out that the middle-aged analyst at a think tank likes to wear diapers and get spanked by grandmothers in leather.

But in my grandmother’s generation, this changed. In the sixties, men and women began to divorce, and women who’d grown up with the expectation that they’d have partners to help them raise their children found themselves with none. They worked like men then, and raised their children the best they could, while their former husbands had relationships with other women and married them and then left them also, perhaps searching for a sense of freedom or a sense of power that being a Black man in the South denied them. If they were not called “sir” in public, at least they could be respected and feared and wanted by the women and children who loved them. They were devalued everywhere except in the home, and this is the place where they turned the paradigm on its head and devalued those in their thrall.

My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded. And had I not been born in Bad Munstereifel. If we had lived in the city -- well, I"m not saying the event would have gone unnoticed, but the fuss would probably only have lasted a week before public interest moved elsewhere. Besides, in a city you are anonymous; the chances of being picked out as Kristel Kolvenbach's granddaughter would be virtually zero. But in a small town -- well, small towns everywhere are rife with gossip, but in Germany they raise it to an art form.

When other girls had tea parties on the playground, I brought out my secondhand Ouija board and attempted to raise the dead. While my classmates gave book reports on The Wind In The Willows or Charlotte’s Web, I did mine on tattered, paperback copies of Stephen King novels that I’d borrowed from my grandmother. Instead of Sweet Valley High, I read books about zombies and vampires. Eventually, my third grade teacher called my mother in to discuss her growing concerns over my behavior, and my mom nodded blithely, but failed to see what the problem was. When Mrs. Johnson handed her my recent book report on Pet Sematary,, my mom wrinkled her forehead with concern and disapproval. "Oh, I see,"she said disappointingly, as she turned to me. "You spelled ‘cemetery’ wrong.” Then I explained that Stephen King had spelled it that way on purpose, and she nodded, saying, “Ah. Well, good enough for me.

She’d learned to use that darkness, learned how to fold herself into shadow until she was a slither of the night itself, learned how to grow claws and steal prince’s hearts. She’d learned to bide her time and wait for the best moment to strike. Really, Black Jaga could hardly claim to be shocked by Zosia’s actions. She was the one who had shaped Zosia into what she was, the one who had raised her. Wasn’t she the monster the old witch had wished for? The monster she’d crafted in her own image. You made me, Grandmother. Am I not everything you wanted me to be? The witch had only herself to blame.

The list of correlations to that night is as long as the Jersey coast. And so is the list of reasons I shouldn't be looking forward to seeing him at school. But I can't help it. He's already texted me three times this morning: Can I pick you up for school? and Do u want 2 have breakfast? and R u getting my texts? My thumbs want to answer "yes" to all of the above, but my dignity demands that I don't answer at all. He called my his student. He stood there alone with me on the beach and told me he thinks of me as a pupil. That our relationship is platonic. And everyone knows what platonic means-rejected. Well, I might be his student, but I'm about to school, him on a few things. The first lesson of the day is Silent Treatment 101. So when I see him in the hall, I give him a polite nod and brush right by him. The zap from the slight contact never quite fades, which mean he's following me. I make it to my locker before his hand is on my arm. "Emma." The way he whispers my name sends goose bumps all the way to my baby toes. But I'm still in control. I nod to him, dial the combination to my locker, then open it in his face. He moves back before contact. Stepping around me, he leans his hand against the locker door and turns me around to face him. "That's not very nice." I raise my best you-started-this brow. He sighs. "I guess that means you didn't miss me." There are so many things I could pop off right now. Things like, "But at least I had Toraf to keep my company" or "You were gone?" Or "Don't feel bad, I didn't miss my calculus teacher either." But the goal is to say nothing. So I turn around. I transfer books and papers between my locker and backpack. As I stab a pencil into my updo, his breath pushes against my earlobe when he chuckles. "So your phone's not broken; you just didn't respond to my texts." Since rolling my eyes doesn't make a sound, it's still within the boundaries of Silent Treatment 101. So I do this while I shut my locker. As I push past him, he grabs my arm. And I figure if stomping on his toe doesn't make a sound... "My grandmother's dying," he blurts. Commence with the catching-Emma-off-guard crap. How can I continue Silent Treatment 101 after that? He never mentioned his grandmother before, but then again, I never mentioned mine either. "I'm sorry, Galen." I put my hand on his, give it a gentle squeeze. He laughs. Complete jackass. "Conveniently, she lives in a condo in Destin and her dying request is to meet you. Rachel called your mom. We're flying out Saturday afternoon, coming back Sunday night. I already called Dr. Milligan." "Un-freaking-believable.

We bear financial responsibilities that men had in the old days while still saddled with traditional caregiving duties. We generally incur this double whammy precisely while hitting peak stress in both our careers and child-raising--in our forties, at an age when most of our mothers and grandmothers were already empty nesters.

Her hair rustled, brushing her shoulders. There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can't bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured. "I think I understand." "I love your honest heart, Mikage. The grandmother who raised you must have been a wonderful person." I smiled. "She was." "You've been lucky," said Eriko. She laughed, her back to me.

I'd like to make you an offer." An offer? I was suddenly reminded of who I was dealing with here. Lillian Taft wasn't a powder puff. She was the merciless, dictatorial matriarch who'd kicked my pregnant mother out of her house at the ripe old age of seventeen. I stalked to the front door and retrieved the Post-it I'd placed next to the doorbell when our house had been hit with door-to-door evangelists two weeks in a row. I turned and offered the hand-written notice to the women who'd raised my mother. Her perfectly manicured fingertips plucked the Post-it from my grasp. "'No soliciting,'" my grandmother read. "Except for Girl Scout cookies," I added helpfully. I'd gotten kicked out of the local Scout troop during my morbid true-crime and facts-about-autopsies phase, but I still had a weakness for Thin Mints. Lillian pursed her lips and amended her previous statement. "'No soliciting except for Girl Scout cookies.'" I saw the precise moment that she registered what I was saying: I wasn't interested in her offer. Whatever she was selling, I wasn't buying.

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.

During the war the Chilean Nazi Party paraded with brown uniforms, flags bearing swastikas, and arms raised in a Nazi salute. My grandmother ran alongside, throwing tomatoes at them. This woman was an exception because in Chile people were so anti-Semitic that the word Jew was a dirty word, and I have friends who had their mouths washed out with soap for having dared say it.

I began my life as I shall no doubt end it: among books. In my grandfather's study, they were everywhere; it was forbidden to dust them except once a year, before the October term. Even before I could read, I already revered these raised stones; upright or leaning, wedged together like bricks on the library shelves or nobly placed like avenues of dolmens, I felt that our family prosperity depended on them. They were all alike, and I was romping about in a tiny sanctuary, surrounded by squat, ancient monuments which had witnessed my birth, which would witness my death and whose permanence guaranteed me a future as calm as my past. I used to touch them in secret to honour my hands with their dust but I did not have much idea what to do with them and each day I was present at ceremonies whose meaning escaped me: my grandfather - so clumy, normally, that my grandmother buttoned his gloves for him - handled these cultural objects with the dexterity of an officiating priest. Hundreds of times I saw him get up absent-mindedly, walk round the table, cross the room in two strides, unhesitatingly pick out a volume without allowing himself time for choice, run through it as he went back to his armchair, with a combined movement of his thumb and right forefinger, and, almost before he sat down, open it with a flick "at the right page," making it creak like a shoe. I sometimes got close enough to observe these boxes which opened like oysters and I discovered the nakedness of their internal organs, pale, dank, slightly blistering pages, covered with small black veins, which drank ink and smelt of mildew.

raise my eyebrows, relieved to finally be meeting someone outside Fallon’s social circle. I extend my hand to her. “I’m Elloren Gardner.” She laughs and takes my hand in hers. “That’s obvious. I’ve heard all about you.” “Let me guess,” I say guardedly. “I’m the girl who looks exactly like my grandmother?” “No,” she laughs, “you’re the girl who’s been living under a rock somewhere up north. But I think your real claim to fame is that you’ve never been kissed.” My face going hot, I sigh and reach up to massage my aching forehead. “I should never have told her that.” “Don’t worry,” she says, trying to comfort me. “I have been kissed, and it’s overrated.” I stop rubbing my forehead. “Really?” “Really. Two people, smushing their mouths together, tasting each other’s spit, possibly with food bits mixed into it. It’s not at all appealing, when you really think about it.” I let

My great-grandmother raised nine children to adulthood in a world without supermarkets, refrigerators, or washing machines. She did not have much time to search for “unconditional love” or “commitment,” because she was too busy practicing it herself. Most of her life was taken up with the unceasing procurement and preparation of food for her husband and children. Yet she got along fine without romance novels, child custody gamesmanship, or psychotherapy; she was, I am told, always cheerful and contented. This is something beyond the imagination of barren, resentful feminists. It is the satisfaction which results from knowing that one is carrying out a worthwhile task to the best of one’s abilities, a satisfaction nothing else in life can give. We are here today because this is the way women used to behave; we cannot continue long under the present system of rotating polyandry.

The girls still in school would pass their babies around, playing. It was an endless churn, baby after baby, born to the young and raised in families that spanned five or six generations because so few years separated grandmothers and mothers and daughters—and because the girls couldn’t take care of them without help. All that mattered to people, it seemed, was the endless creation of life itself; the quality of it was never evaluated and never came into the equation.

But when the time comes to judge, to understand a betrayal which will spread like flame across the Web, which will end worlds, I ask you not to think of me—my name was not even writ on water as your lost poet’s soul said—but to think of Old Earth dying for no reason, to think of the dolphins, their gray flesh drying and rotting in the sun, to see—as I have seen—the motile isles with no place to wander, their feeding grounds destroyed, the Equatorial Shallows scabbed with drilling platforms, the islands themselves burdened with shouting, trammeling tourists smelling of UV lotion and cannabis. Or better yet, think of none of that. Stand as I did after throwing the switch, a murderer, a betrayer, but still proud, feet firmly planted on Hyperion’s shifting sand, head held high, fist raised against the sky, crying “A plague on both your houses!” For you see, I remember my grandmother’s dream. I remember the way it could have been. I remember Siri.

When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned from your Grandmother Henderson in Arkansas and what you have learned from me, you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don’t let anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will always have to make adaptations, in love relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don’t let anybody change your mind. And then remember this: You can always come home.

No one taught me to be Native American. My mother taught me that I was, but she did not have the context for what that heritage meant. My grandmother mentioned it very little, even though it was visible in her features. Yet from my earliest memories, being Native has always been an integral part of my identity. Even though I was raised far from my tribe, far from any tribe, I heard the drumbeat of our traditions in my heart. My name is Leah Kallen Myers. I am the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in my family line.

My mother came into the kitchen. “Whose car is that parked in front of our house?” “That’s Stephanie’s new car,” Grandma said. “Isn’t it a pip?” One of my mother’s eyebrows raised in question. “Two new cars? Where are these cars coming from?” “Company cars,” I said. “Oh?” “Anal sex is not involved,” I told her. My mother and grandmother both gasped. “Sorry,” I said. “It just slipped out.” “I thought only homosexual men did anal sex,” Grandma said. “Anybody with an anus can do it,” I told her. “Hmm,” she said. “I got one of them.

What for are you crying?” His gaze raised to meet Summer’s, the furrow between his eyes deepening. “What has happened?” He looked to the chair, where the grandmother held up her gnarled hands and shook her head, apparently attempting to offer assurance. “Nothing’s wrong, Pa. It’s onions.” Mr. Ollenburger seemed to wilt with relief. Summer felt a wave of sympathy for the real fear he had experienced. She swept away the tears with the backs of her wrists and held up a thick slice of onion. “Yes … see? You grow powerful onions in your garden, Mr. Ollenburger.

​In 2012, George Zimmerman left his home to follow and accost his neighbor, Trayvon Martin, who was walking through their gated community in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, who brought a gun to the encounter, shot and killed Martin because, as he said in his trial, he feared for his life. Zimmerman was found not guilty by a jury. In 2015, less than a mile from my home, four white men wearing ski masks appeared at a peaceful event protesting the recent killing of Jamar Clark by a white policeman. At least one of the four men, Allen Scarsella, carried a gun, which he allegedly described in a text message as “specially designed by Browning to kill brown people.” Protestors, most of whom were African American, noticed the four men in masks, surrounded them, and asked why they were there. They also demanded that the men remove their masks. Scarsella then drew his gun and shot five protestors. At his trial, Scarsella’s public defender explained that Scarsella fired the shots because he was “scared out of his mind.” These and other similar incidents raise some questions. First, under what circumstances is it legitimate to deliberately precipitate a conflict, shoot one or more people, and be considered guiltless because you were scared? Second, if “I feared for my life” or “I was scared out of my mind” becomes a legitimate defense, then can anyone who fears dark skin guiltlessly shoot any Black body that comes near? What about any Black body he or she seeks out, accosts, and shoots? Does your reflexive, lizard-brain fear of my dark body trump my right to exist? A Minnesota jury provided one answer to these questions in February of 2017: It found Scarsella guilty on all counts. He was given a fifteen-year prison sentence. A different Minnesota jury provided the opposite answer four months later: it found Jeronimo Yanez not guilty.

My maternal grandmother died on December 21st, and her only concern was that we wouldn't find the Christmas gifts that she'd hidden away for the family. Right then, I understood why my mother was such a kind woman - she followed her mother's example and passed that compassion on to her children. My grandmother's example in life became her shining example of a noble death - selfless and caring until the end. While some choose the path unilaterally, for me, kindness is a learned behaviour: teach your children humility by your words and actions, and they will give something to this world and not just take from it.

if they label you soft, feather weight and white-livered, if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head, and laughs at how quiet your hands stay, if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat, you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman who had to survive fifteen different species of disaster to bring you here, and you didn’t come to piss on trees. you ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull boy, don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance of street-corner logic, this blood legend, this index of catcalls, “three hundred ways to turn a woman into a three course meal”, this legacy of shame, and man, and pillage, and man, and rape, and man. you boy. you won’t be some girl’s slit wrists dazzling the bathtub, won’t be some girl’s, “i didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway”, the torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door, some father’s excuse to polish his gun. if they say, “take what you want”, you tell them you already have everything you need; you come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging, you come men who drank away their life savings, and men who raised daughters alone. you come from love you gotta put your back into, elbow-grease loving like slow-dancing on dirty linoleum, you come from that house of worship. boy, i dare you to hold something like that. love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking. love whatever music looks best on your feet. whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point, you treat her like she is the god of your pulse, you treat her like you would want your father to treat me: i dare you to be that much man one day. that you would give up your seat on the train to the invisible women, juggling babies and groceries. that you would hold doors, and say thank-you, and understand that women know they are beautiful without you having to yell it at them from across the street. the day i hear you call a woman a “bitch” is the day i dig my own grave. see how you feel writing that eulogy. and if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails, if there is ever a powder-blue heart left for dead on your doorstep, and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears, be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth. don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem, or a song, or some other sweetness to soften the blow, boy, i dare you to break like that. you look too much like your mother not t

More often than not, the people around me weren’t simply deciding to give up. They were living in a culture of dependency that had been passed down from birth. My mother and grandmother gave in to the culture. And they expected me to figure out the best way to live on that same track, to game the system and not even try to escape. My friend Ben agrees. 'Most of the time, what you see in the housing projects are generations of families,' he says. 'People accustomed to this lifestyle. It becomes comfortable, so they don’t move away, and even their children stay and raise kids in the same environment.' In neighborhoods like the ones where Ben and I grew up, there is no perceived incentive to advance. After all, the checks for housing and the food stamps and assistance arrive every month. This is why the system must be reformed. Welfare should exist only for a certain period of time, unless you’re disabled and can’t physically work. It should not last for a generation or more. There are millions of jobs open, without enough people to fill them or, rather, without enough people who have the necessary skills and training. This is where the government should come in, providing incentives for real-world training and educating recipients about a life beyond government dependence.

So, those women told me witnessing my mother’s weakness drove my own, and her watching my grandfather beat my grandmother was what drove hers. They told me I was raised thinking it was okay for a man to do that to a woman. I was raised thinking self-worth was gained by catering to a man’s needs at whatever cost. Even if it meant degrading myself time and time again. “But the apple can fall far from the tree. Fifty percent of children who grow up seeing that will never walk in their parents’ footsteps, whether it’s a boy watching his father beat his mother or a young girl watching her mother get hit. But this apple landed on the tree’s stump, Gavin. This apple took the same path as her mother.

Not now, Em." I hopped over a paver, my pace just shy of making me pant. "If not now, when?" "How about never?" "Yeah, that's not going to work." He snorted with feeling. "You're operating under the misconception that I owe you anything. I don't." Definitely touchy. "And I didn't owe you anything when you asked about Dark Castle. But I told you how I felt anyway." "That's on you." We rounded a corner, heading toward the tennis court. I had no idea where he was going; maybe he simply thought he could wear me out and pull away. "You're right." I stopped on the trail, my arms falling to my sides as I caught my breath. To hell with it. I didn't need to be chasing a man who didn't want to be bothered. Weirdly, as if compelled, Lucian came to a halt and half turned my way to glare at me from over his wide shoulder. His body remained tense and poised to take flight once more. "We owe each other nothing," I said, raising my voice enough to be clear over the ten feet that separated us. "But no one lives in a complete void. Your grandmother and Sal walk on eggshells around you." Oh, but that got him. Red suffused his neck, and he stalked back my way, coming within touching distance. "You know nothing about them. Or me." Yeah, that hurt. It shouldn't have, but it did. "I know enough. They worry about you. They love you." Lucian's nostrils flared. "I mean it, Emma. I do not do well with guilt trips." "If you feel guilty, that's on you.

About a block away from them there lived another Lithuanian family, consisting of an elderly widow and one grown son; their name was Majauszkis, and our friends struck up an acquaintance with them before long. One evening they came over for a visit, and naturally the first subject upon which the conversation turned was the neighborhood and its history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene, as the old lady was called, proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors that fairly froze their blood. She was a wrinkled-up and wizened personage--she must have been eighty--and as she mumbled the grim story through her toothless gums, she seemed a very old witch to them. Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people might about weddings and holidays. The thing came gradually. In the first place as to the house they had bought, it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about fifteen years old, and there was nothing new upon it but the paint, which was so bad that it needed to be put on new every year or two. The house was one of a whole row that was built by a company which existed to make money by swindling poor people. The family had paid fifteen hundred dollars for it, and it had not cost the builders five hundred, when it was new. Grandmother Majauszkiene knew that because her son belonged to a political organization with a contractor who put up exactly such houses. They used the very flimsiest and cheapest material; they built the houses a dozen at a time, and they cared about nothing at all except the outside shine. The family could take her word as to the trouble they would have, for she had been through it all--she and her son had bought their house in exactly the same way. They had fooled the company, however, for her son was a skilled man, who made as high as a hundred dollars a month, and as he had had sense enough not to marry, they had been able to pay for the house. Grandmother Majauszkiene saw that her friends were puzzled at this remark; they did not quite see how paying for the house was "fooling the company." Evidently they were very inexperienced. Cheap as the houses were, they were sold with the idea that the people who bought them would not be able to pay for them. When they failed--if it were only by a single month--they would lose the house and all that they had paid on it, and then the company would sell it over again. And did they often get a chance to do that? Dieve! (Grandmother Majauszkiene raised her hands.) They did it--how often no one could say, but certainly more than half of the time. They might ask any one who knew anything at all about Packingtown as to that; she had been living here ever since this house was built, and she could tell them all about it. And had it ever been sold before? Susimilkie! Why, since it had been built, no less than four families that their informant could name had tried to buy it and failed.

At a talk I gave at a church months later, I spoke about Charlie and the plight of incarcerated children. Afterward, an older married couple approached me and insisted that they had to help Charlie. I tried to dissuade these kind people from thinking they could do anything, but I gave them my card and told them they could call me. I didn't expect to hear from them, but within days they called, and they were persistent. We eventually agreed that they would write a letter to Charlie and send it to me to pass on to him. When I received the letter weeks later, I read it. It was remarkable. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were a white couple in their mid-seventies from a small community northeast of Birmingham. They were kind and generous people who were active in their local United Methodist church. They never missed a Sunday service and were especially drawn to children in crisis. They spoke softly and always seemed to be smiling but never appeared to be anything less than completely genuine and compassionate. They were affectionate with each other in a way that was endearing, frequently holding hands and leaning into each other. They dressed like farmers and owned ten acres of land, where they grew vegetables and lived simply. Their one and only grandchild, whom they had helped raise, had committed suicide when he was a teenager, and they had never stopped grieving for him. Their grandson struggled with mental health problems during his short life, but he was a smart kid and they had been putting money away to send him to college. They explained in their letter that they wanted to use the money they'd saved for their grandson to help Charlie. Eventually, Charlie and this couple began corresponding with one another, building up to the day when the Jenningses met Charlie at the juvenile detention facility. They later told me that they "loved him instantly." Charlie's grandmother had died a few months after she first called me, and his mother was still struggling after the tragedy of the shooting and Charlie's incarceration. Charlie had been apprehensive about meeting with the Jenningses because he thought they wouldn't like him, but he told me after they left how much they seemed to care about him and how comforting that was. The Jenningses became his family. At one point early on, I tried to caution them against expecting too much from Charlie after his release. 'You know, he's been through a lot. I'm not sure he can just carry on as if nothing has ever happened. I want you to understand he may not be able to do everything you'd like him to do.' They never accepted my warnings. Mrs. Jennings was rarely disagreeable or argumentative, but I had learned that she would grunt when someone said something she didn't completely accept. She told me, 'We've all been through a lot, Bryan, all of us. I know that some have been through more than others. But if we don't expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed.' The Jenningses helped Charlie get his general equivalency degree in detention and insisted on financing his college education. They were there, along with his mother, to take him home when he was released.

I was disappointed when he resumed the thread of his narrative. Whenever he spoke of something whose beauty had until then remained hidden from me, of pine-forests or of hailstorms, of Notre-Dame Cathedral, of Athalie or of Phèdre, by some piece of imagery he would make their beauty explode into my consciousness. And so, realising that the universe contained innumerable elements which my feeble senses would be powerless to discern did he not bring them within my reach, I longed to have some opinion, some metaphor of his, upon everything in the world, and especially upon such things as I might some day have an opportunity of seeing for myself But, alas, upon almost everything in the world his opinion was unknown to me. I had no doubt that it would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own mind, my heart would swell as though some deity had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be beautiful and right. It happened now and then that a page of [my favourite writer] would express precisely those ideas which I often used to write to my grandmother and my mother at night, when I was unable to sleep, so much so that this page of his had the appearance of a collection of epigraphs for me to set at the head of my letters. And so too, in later years, when I began to write a book of my own, and the quality of some of my sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to go on with the undertaking, I would find the equivalent in [my favourite writer].

She planned to save, set up a decent life in a remade Chicago apartment, and send for her kids; but her leave-taking must have revived feelings of her own mother’s abandonment, her children now in the hands of the same group of women who raised her. Lolo’s eldest boy, Joseph, tested the women. “I could get spankings, but as soon as the hurt stop I’m doing something else they didn’t think I had no business doing,” he says. “That was just part of my personality.” Elaine cried whenever her mouth wasn’t chewing on something. “I want Lolo,” she moaned over and over again. “Give me Lolo.” From Chicago, Grandmother heard reports that Joseph, Elaine, and Ivory weren’t well fed. Out of all the things to go wrong, this one thing seemed untenable. “I promised when I got to be a man I wasn’t gone eat no more weenies and spaghetti,” Uncle Joe told me. “TeTe wasn’t no good cook and that’s what we used to eat every day.” And so Lolo came back. No one likes to dwell on her going away, for it speaks too loudly and reveals too much. It could be said that she almost escaped this particular story.

Eleanor was a member of one of America’s great families, niece to Teddy Roosevelt and a distant cousin of her future husband. But she was not raised to be anyone significant. In fact, it’s surprising she survived her upbringing at all—one cousin called it “the grimmest childhood I had ever known.” Her father was an alcoholic who kept abandoning the family. One of her two brothers died when she was five years old, and her mother, who she remembered as “kindly and indifferent,” died when she was eight. Her father, who Eleanor worshiped despite his endless betrayals, died two years later. The orphan was sent to live with her grandmother, a stern woman with two alcoholic adult sons whose advances caused a teenage Eleanor to put three locks on her door. When she met Franklin, he was a student at Harvard and was known in the family as the not particularly impressive only son of a domineering widow. Eleanor got pregnant right after her wedding and spent the next ten years having six children and wriggling under her mother-in-law’s thumb. (“I was your real mother; Eleanor merely bore you,” Sara Roosevelt told her grandchildren.)

At first, I didn’t know who Other People were, nor did I understand how concerned I should be about their perception of my actions good, bad, or otherwise. But I spent so much time with my grandmother, and she spent so much time talking about Other People, I eventually had some idea about the bad things they might say about me. They might say my clothes are too big, or small, or maybe even that they look old. If I’m hypervigilant about my personal hygiene, they might tell others about the time I used to stink. They might not be there for me. They might not love me. My grandmother didn’t see this as gossiping or being critical. She thought she was being helpful. Her fearful desire not to be “talked about” expressed itself as a constant monitoring of Other People’s behaviors and presentations of themselves, and she offered swift judgment whether the behavior or presentation was good or bad. Most were bad. This frustrated her to no end. Why weren’t people more careful? What kind of woman left the house without wearing lipstick? How could anyone let themselves get that fat? Who raised them? Who let them become this way? Didn’t they know Other People would talk about them?

Who are you, Merripen?” he asked softly. The big Rom went back to work. “No one.” “You were part of a tribe once. You must have had family.” “I don’t remember any father. My mother died when I was born.” “So did mine. I was raised by my grandmother.” The brush halted in midstroke. Neither of them moved. The stable became deadly quiet, except for the snuffling and shifting of horses. “I was raised by my uncle. To be one of the asharibe.” “Ah.” Cam kept any hint of pity from his expression, but privately he thought, You poor bastard. No wonder Merripen fought so well. Some Gypsy tribes took their strongest boys and turned them into bare-knuckle fighters, pitting them against each other at fairs and pubs and gatherings, for onlookers to make bets on. Some of the boys were disfigured or even killed. And the ones who survived were hardened fighters down to the bootstraps, and designated as warriors of the tribe. “Well, that explains your sweet temperament,” Cam said. “Was that why you chose to stay with the Hathaways after they took you in? Because you no longer wanted to live as an asharibe?” “Yes.” “You’re lying, phral,” Cam said, watching him closely. “You stayed for another reason.” And Cam knew from the Rom’s visible flush that he’d hit upon the truth. Quietly, Cam added, “You stayed for her.

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.

Despite the raised voices and the wild gesticulations, nobody here is wrong. The beauty of ragù is that it's an idea as much as it is a recipe, a slow-simmered distillation of what means and circumstances have gifted you: If Zia Peppe's ragù is made with nothing but pork scraps, that's because her neighbor raises pigs. When Maria cooks her vegetables in a mix of oil and butter, it's because her family comes from a long line of dairy farmers. When Nonna Anna slips a few laurel leaves into the pot, she plucks them from the tree outside her back door. There is no need for a decree from the Chamber of Commerce to tell these women what qualifies as the authentic ragù; what's authentic is whatever is simmering under the lid. Eventually the women agree to disagree and the rolling boil of the debate calms to a gentle simmer. Alessandro opens a few bottles of pignoletto he's brought to make the peace. We drink and take photos and make small talk about tangential ragù issues such as the proper age of Parmesan and the troubled state of the prosciutto industry in the region. On my way out, Anna no. 1 grabs me by the arm. She pulls me close and looks up into my eyes with an earnestness that drowns out the rest of the chatter in the room. "Forget about these arguments. Forget about the small details. Just remember that the most important ingredient for making ragù, the one thing you can never forget, is love." Lisetta overhears from across the room and quickly adds, "And pancetta!

I had an experience in the whale nursery in Baja, Mexico, that moved me deeply. I noticed that one whale was extremely white, which our guide explained occurs with these whales as they get older. Its body and tail had numerous scratches and gouges, which usually come from years of defending babies from orcas that try to eat the young on their annual migration from Alaska to Baja. As the whale came closer, we could see many barnacles on its skin and a deep indentation in the back of the blowhole, which also were signs of an elder whale. Our guide said it was almost certainly a grandmother whale. “The grandmother whale’s head popped up next to our boat as the swirling, bubbling water spilled away. She raised her chin toward the rail of our boat, and we began to stroke her silvery skin. Aside from the barnacles, her skin was smooth and spongy, as we could feel the soft blubber beneath. As we stroked her she rolled to her side, opening her mouth and showing us her baleen, a sign of relaxation. And then she looked at us with one of her beautiful eyes. What she could see of us as we stared down at her from the boat, smiling and laughing, I had no idea, but it was clear she felt safe and wanted to connect in these bays, where possibly during her lifetime we had almost exterminated her kind. I felt so moved that tears were rolling down my cheeks. “Our guide was in the background saying, ‘This whale has forgiven us. She has forgiven us for who we were and is seeing who we are today.

With a scowl, he turned from the window, but it was too late. The sight of Lady Celia crossing the courtyard dressed in some rich fabric had already stirred his blood. She never wore such fetching clothes; generally her lithe figure was shrouded in smocks to protect her workaday gowns from powder smudges while she practiced her target shooting. But this morning, in that lemon-colored gown, with her hair finely arranged and a jeweled bracelet on her delicate wrist, she was summer on a dreary winter day, sunshine in the bleak of night, music in the still silence of a deserted concert hall. And he was a fool. "I can see how you might find her maddening," Masters said in a low voice. Jackson stiffened. "Your wife?" he said, deliberately being obtuse. "Lady Celia." Hell and blazes. He'd obviously let his feelings show. He'd spent his childhood learning to keep them hidden so the other children wouldn't see how their epithets wounded him, and he'd refined that talent as an investigator who knew the value of an unemotional demeanor. He drew on that talent as he faced the barrister. "Anyone would find her maddening. She's reckless and spoiled and liable to give her husband grief at every turn." When she wasn't tempting him to madness. Masters raised an eyebrow. "Yet you often watch her. Have you any interest there?" Jackson forced a shrug. "Certainly not. You'll have to find another way to inherit your new bride's fortune." He'd hoped to prick Masters's pride and thus change the subject, but Masters laughed. "You, marry my sister-in-law? That, I'd like to see. Aside from the fact that her grandmother would never approve, Lady Celia hates you." She did indeed. The chit had taken an instant dislike to him when he'd interfered in an impromptu shooting match she'd been participating in with her brother and his friends at a public park. That should have set him on his guard right then. A pity it hadn't. Because even if she didn't despise him and weren't miles above him in rank, she'd never make him a good wife. She was young and indulged, not the sort of female to make do on a Bow Street Runner's salary. But she'll be an heiress once she marries. He gritted his teeth. That only made matters worse. She would assume he was marrying her for her inheritance. So would everyone else. And his pride chafed at that. Dirty bastard. Son of shame. Whoreson. Love-brat. He'd been called them all as a boy. Later, as he'd moved up at Bow Street, those who resented his rapid advancement had called him a baseborn upstart. He wasn't about to add money-grubbing fortune hunter to the list. "Besides," Masters went on, "you may not realize this, since you haven't been around much these past few weeks, but Minerva claims that Celia has her eye on three very eligible potential suitors." Jackson's startled gaze shot to him. Suitors? The word who was on his lips when the door opened and Stoneville entered. The rest of the family followed, leaving Jackson to force a smile and exchange pleasantries as they settled into seats about the table, but his mind kept running over Masters's words. Lady Celia had suitors. Eligible ones. Good-that was good. He needn't worry about himself around her anymore. She was now out of his reach, thank God. Not that she was ever in his reach, but- "Have you got any news?" Stoneville asked. Jackson started. "Yes." He took a steadying breath and forced his mine to the matter at hand.

My sisters and I giggled at “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” (“Tits and ass / bought myself a fancy pair / tightened up the derriere”) while our parents sat in the front of the car—my father at the wheel, my mom in the passenger seat—both distracted and nonplussed. We flipped through the Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins hardbacks in my grandmother’s bookshelf and watched The Exorcist on the Z Channel (the country’s first pay-cable network that premiered in LA in the mid-’70s) after our parents sternly told us not to watch it, but of course we did anyway and got properly freaked out. We saw skits about people doing cocaine on Saturday Night Live, and we were drawn to the allure of disco culture and unironic horror movies. We consumed all of this and none of it ever triggered us—we were never wounded because the darkness and the bad mood of the era was everywhere, and when pessimism was the national language, a badge of hipness and cool. Everything was a scam and everybody was corrupt and we were all being raised on a diet of grit. One could argue that this fucked us all up, or maybe, from another angle, it made us stronger. Looking back almost forty years later, it probably made each of us less of a wuss. Yes, we were sixth and seventh graders dealing with a society where no parental filters existed. Tube8.com was not within our reach, fisting videos were not available on our phones, nor were Fifty Shades of Grey or gangster rap or violent video games, and terrorism hadn’t yet reached our shores, but we were children wandering through a world made almost solely for adults. No one cared what we watched or didn’t, how we felt or what we wanted, and we hadn’t yet become enthralled by the cult of victimization. It was, by comparison to what’s now acceptable when children are coddled into helplessness, an age of innocence.

My mother made me into the type of person who is at ease standing in the middle of moving traffic, the type of person who ends up having more adventures and making more mistakes. Mum never stopped encouraging me to try, fail and take risks. I kept pushing myself to do unconventional things because I liked the reaction I got from her when I told her what I'd done. Mum's response to all my exploits was to applaud them. Great, you're living your life, and not the usual life prescribed for a woman either. Well done! Thanks to her, unlike most girls at the time, I grew up regarding recklessness, risk-taking and failure as laudable pursuits. Mum did the same for Vida by giving her a pound every time she put herself forward. If Vida raised her hand at school and volunteered to go to an old people's home to sing, or recited a poem in assembly, or joined a club, Mum wrote it down in a little notebook. Vida also kept a tally of everything she'd tried to do since she last saw her grandmother and would burst out with it all when they met up again. She didn't get a pound if she won a prize or did something well or achieved good marks in an exam, and there was no big fuss or attention if she failed at anything. She was only rewarded for trying. That was the goal. This was when Vida was between the ages of seven and fifteen, the years a girl is most self-conscious about her voice, her looks and fitting in, when she doesn't want to stand out from the crowd or draw attention to herself. Vida was a passive child – she isn't passive now. I was very self-conscious when I was young, wouldn't raise my voice above a whisper or look an adult in the eye until I was thirteen, but without me realizing it Mum taught me to grab life, wrestle it to the ground and make it work for me. She never squashed any thoughts or ideas I had, no matter how unorthodox or out of reach they were. She didn't care what I looked like either. I started experimenting with my clothes aged eleven, wearing top hats, curtains as cloaks, jeans torn to pieces, bare feet in the streets, 1930s gowns, bells around my neck, and all she ever said was, 'I wish I had a camera.

You have to go rescue Gabe before he does something foolish. Chetwin is here and they’re near to coming to blows over that stupid race. They’re in the card room.” “Oh, for God’s sake, I can’t believe Foxmoor invited that idiot.” He hurried off. As soon as Oliver disappeared into the house, Celia and Minerva tugged Maria inside, grinning. “Hurry, before he gets back.” They were met by Lord Gabriel and Lord Jarret, who strode up with several young men in tow. “Lord Gabriel!” Maria exclaimed. “Your brother-“ “Yes, I know. And while he’s gone…” He and Jarret introduced the other gentlemen to her. By the time Oliver returned, she’d promised dances to all of his brothers’ friends. Oliver’s frown deepened as he saw Gabe standing there, blithe as could be. He raised an eyebrow at his sister. “Was running me off in search of Chetwin your idea of a joke?” “I got confused, that’s all,” Celia said brightly. “We’ve been introducing Maria around while you were gone.” “Thank you for making her feel welcome,” he said, though he eyed the other gentlemen warily. Then he held out his arm to Maria. “Come, my dear, let me introduce you to our hosts, so we can dance.” “Sorry, old chap.” Gabe said, stepping between them, “but she’s already promised the first dance to me.” Oliver’s gaze swung to her, dark and accusing, “You didn’t.” She stared to feel guilty, then caught herself. What did she have to feel guilty about? He was the one who’d spent last night at a brothel. He was the one who’d been so caught up in his battle with his grandmother that he hadn’t even bothered to ask her for a dance. He’d just assumed that she would give him one, because he’d “paid” for her services. Well, a pox on him. Meeting his gaze steadily, she thrust out her chin. “You never mentioned it. I had no idea you wanted the first dance.” A black scowl formed on his brow. “Then I get the second dance.” “I’m afraid that one’s mine,” Jarret put in. “Indeed, I believe Miss Butterfield is engaged for every single dance. Isn’t that right, gentlemen?” A male swell of assent turned Oliver’s scowl into a glower. “The hell she is.” Mrs. Plumtree slapped his arm with her fan. “Really, Oliver, you must watch your language around young ladies. This is a respectable gathering.” “I don’t care. She’s my fi-“ He caught himself just in time. “Maria came with me. I deserve at least one dance.” “Then perhaps you should have asked for one before she became otherwise engaged,” Celia said with a mischievous smile. Gabe held out his arm to Maria. “Come, Miss Butterfield,” he said in an echo of his older brother’s words, “I’ll introduce you to our hosts.” As she took his arm, he grinned at Oliver. “You’d better start hoping you draw her name in the lottery for the supper waltz, old boy. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get to dance with her tonight.

I'm investigating Lady Celia's potential suitors." "Oh," she said in a small voice. He glanced at her, surprised to find her looking stricken. "What's wrong?" "I didn't know she had suitors." "Of course she has suitors." Not any he could approve of, but he wasn't about to mention that to his aunt. "I'm sure you read about her grandmother's ultimatum in those reports you transcribed. She has to marry, and soon, too." "I know. But I was rather hoping...I mean, with you there so often and her being an unconventional sort..." When he cast her a quizzical look, she went on more forcefully, "There's no reason you couldn't offer for her." He nearly choked on his bread. "Are you out of your mind?" "She needs a husband. You need a wife. Why not her?" "Because marquess's daughters don't marry bastards, for one thing." The coarse word made her flinch. "You're still from a perfectly respectable family, no matter the circumstances of your birth." She eyed him with a sudden gleam in her eye. "And I notice you didn't say you weren't interested." Hell. He stopped up from gravy with his bread. "I'm not interested." "I'm not saying you have to be in love with her. That would perhaps be asking too much at this point, but if you courted her, in time-" "I would fall in love? With Lady Celia? That isn't possible." "Why not?" Because what he felt for Celia Sharpe was lust, pure and simple. He didn't even know if he wanted to fall in love. It was all fine and well for the Sharpes, who could love where they pleased, but for people like him and his mother, love was an impossible luxury...or a tragedy in the making. That's why he couldn't let his desire for Lady Celia overcome his reason. His hunger for her might be more powerful than he cared to admit, but he'd controlled it until now, and he would get the best of it in time. He had to. She was determined to marry someone else. His aunt was watching him with a hooded gaze. "I hear she's somewhat pretty." Hell and blazes, she wouldn't let this go. "You hear? From whom?" "Your clerk. He saw her when the family came in to the office one time. He's told me about all the Sharpes, how they depend on you and admire you." He snorted. "I see my clerk has been doing it up brown." "So she's not pretty?" "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever-" At her raised eyebrow, he scowled. "Too beautiful for the likes of me. And of far too high a consequence." "Her grandmother is a brewer. Her family has been covered in scandal for years. And they're grateful to you for all you've done so far. They might be grateful enough to countenance your suit." "You don't know the Sharpes." "Oh, so they're too high and mighty? Treat you like a servant?" "No," he bit out. "But..." "By my calculations, there's two months left before she has to marry. If she's had no offers, she might be getting desperate enough to-" "Settle for a bastard?" "Ignore the difference in your stations." She seized his arm. "Don't you see, my boy? Here's your chance. You're on the verge of becoming Chief Magistrate. That would hold some weight with her.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Cantor was born to a family of Russian immigrants, Jan. 31, 1892, in New York’s Lower East Side. His mother died soon after his birth; his father died of pneumonia a year later. His given name was either Isadore Itzkowitz or Edward Israel Iskowitz (he claimed both during his life). He was raised by a grandmother who was 60 when he was born. In his autobiography he describes a childhood filled with tenement-life hardship, “poverty, misery, and disease.” At 6, when he entered public school, his Grandma Esther enrolled him under her name, Kantrowitz, which the registrar wrote down as “Kanter.” When he was older, he changed it to “Cantor.” He began calling himself “Eddie” because his girlfriend Ida Tobias, the “belle of Henry Street,” liked the way it sounded on him. In his own words, he was “truant from school, pilferer of pushcarts, hooligan, street fighter, liar.” He slept on rooftops and sang for change on street corners. For years he remembered wearing shoes “pulpy with wet cardboard” and clothes that held the damp of snow all day long.

When the company had passed on, Rising Hawk laid the deer carcass on the ground at her feet. “This is for Polly,” he said shyly. “It is unthinkable for a bridegroom to claim his bride without proof of his hunting skill. The deer around here are not well. Your winter must have been bad, like ours. This was the best I could find.” His eyes finally met hers. He was the same, a little haggard. She was older. Neither of them was sure that they read anything in the looks they gave each other. “Gideon gave you my message? I was afraid it would not get here before I did.” “He told me yesterday,” she said, “but he didn’t tell me you were bringing a wedding party.” She was cool, without anger, very polite--as if she were addressing an acquaintance, and a distant one at that. Rising Hawk felt his confidence melting away. “Why didn’t you send word sooner?” she asked, her voice accusing. “I tried, but there was no one to take my message, once I had the courage to try. Anyway, there seemed to be no words for my sorrow that you had not heard before.” “Oh.” He was beginning to think he had made a mistake. This was shaping up as a refusal. And after all the persuading he had wasted on his uncle and grandmother. He glanced down at the deer. It was humiliating, but he hadn’t come all this way to stand here dumb, like a chastened twelve-year-old. Without raising his eyes he said, “I missed you so much my soul was sick. My only dreams were of you. On the winter hunt my aim was terrible, like an old man with fading sight. My friends pitied me. I could listen to stories in the longhouse, but I could not tell any afterward because my heart held no memory of them.” He paused, ashamed to admit it. “I tried drinking for a while.” He saw her start slightly and she said, less harshly, “Me too.” “What happened between us was my fault.” “No, it wasn’t. I said I wouldn’t marry you. What else could I expect? Your only fault was in leaving without saying good-bye. That made it terrible.” “I’m sorry, Livy. I behaved like a spiteful boy.” “Yes, you did.” She agreed much too easily, he thought. She might be more gracious about it.

Why didn’t you send word sooner?” she asked, her voice accusing. “I tried, but there was no one to take my message, once I had the courage to try. Anyway, there seemed to be no words for my sorrow that you had not heard before.” “Oh.” He was beginning to think he had made a mistake. This was shaping up as a refusal. And after all the persuading he had wasted on his uncle and grandmother. He glanced down at the deer. It was humiliating, but he hadn’t come all this way to stand here dumb, like a chastened twelve-year-old. Without raising his eyes he said, “I missed you so much my soul was sick. My only dreams were of you. On the winter hunt my aim was terrible, like an old man with fading sight. My friends pitied me. I could listen to stories in the longhouse, but I could not tell any afterward because my heart held no memory of them.” He paused, ashamed to admit it. “I tried drinking for a while.” He saw her start slightly, and she said, less harshly, “Me, too.” “What happened between us was my fault.” “No, it wasn’t. I said I wouldn’t marry you. What else could I expect? Your only fault was in leaving without saying good-bye. That made it terrible.” “I’m sorry, Livy. I behaved like a spiteful boy.” “Yes, you did.” She agreed much too easily, he thought. She might be more gracious about it.

The candles burned low and flickered before sizzling softly and leaving a trace smell of burn. When I'd lit them a few hours before, I thought, as I always did, about my grandmothers, who had also done this every week. I had no idea if any of them ever felt the way I did, only that they had lived and raised their families as part of this world. If I were to leave, would I be ceding my connection to them as well; would they have ceased to claim me as their own?

It is certainly of service to a man to know who were his grandfathers and who were his grandmothers if he entertain an ambition to move in the upper circles of society, and also of service to be able to speak of them as of persons who were themselves somebodies in their time. No doubt we all entertain great respect for those who by their own energies have raised themselves in the world; and when we hear that the son of a washerwoman has become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury we do, theoretically and abstractedly, feel a higher reverence for such self-made magnate than for one who has been as it were born into forensic or ecclesiastical purple. But not the less must the offspring of the washerwoman have had very much trouble on the subject of his birth, unless he has been, when young as well as when old, a very great man indeed. After the goal has been absolutely reached, and the honour and the titles and the wealth actually won, a man may talk with some humour, even with some affection, of the maternal tub;

The compulsion for me to get my cotton-pickin’ fingers on my fellow man is the natural result of my belief that I have the word. If I do have the word and feel surrounded by unmolded clay, I have no choice but to mold. When I do this, I begin playing God, and as a result usually raise the devil.

She started in on him the second he crossed the threshold from the living room. “I was wrong about you all these years. I always thought you were a smart boy, but you don’t have the brains God gave a jackass.” “Aunt Mary, I—” “Don’t you Aunt Mary me, Sean Michael Kowalski. I should go get my wooden spoon and thunk some sense into that thick head of yours.” Sean sighed and tried to school his expression into something closer to contrition than belligerence. Not that she wouldn’t see through it, but he made the effort regardless. “I’m just helping her out for a few weeks so that—” “Helping her lie to her grandmother, you mean.” “I know it sounds bad, but—” “Because you were raised better than that.” He’d known this wouldn’t be easy, but he’d been hoping to at least finish a sentence or two. “Can I talk? Please?” “When you have something sensible to say.

So what if my grandmother had some advice for my mom. So what if her ways of raising children are old fashioned. So what… “I’m

Foreword As a true blue Southern girl I have often wondered…if preppies could have their own handbook…why not us? And now at last, my two good friends Deborah Ford and Edie Hand have written the definitive handbook for Southern gals raised in the South. One must simply not leave home without it! It deserves a place on your shelf between Gone With the Wind and the Memphis Junior League cookbook, and I predict in years to come it will be passed down to daughters along with the family silver and great-grandmother’s lace doilies. It is funny, wise, charming, and smart, just like the two gals who wrote it. As modern Southern women we have learned to network with one another and share all the good advice and recipes and rules of accepted behavior that have been handed down to us (it’s a rough world out there). And so in keeping with that wonderful tradition I would like to share some advice my own wise Southern mother gave to me. When I was in high school contemplating whether to take Home Economics or not, my mother exclaimed: “Oh no, darling…you must never learn to cook and clean or they will expect you to do it!” It is advice that has served me well throughout the years. Good luck in all you do! -Fannie Flagg

“I incorporated special linen pieces that had belonged to all the women in my family back to my grandmother. By saving their pretty and sentimental things and including them in the wedding, I felt like they were part of it.” -Retta Wolff, Texas Grits

But anyone raised by a grandparent knows of that watershed moment, when you become old enough to realize that the shrunken skin and eggshell hair on the person you love is an indicator that they are old, and old people tend to die. You start counting down the days, and everything in life aches with the loss that is to come. My grandmother never intended to abandon me, but when the day came, she had no choice.

Don’t hurt Yogi!” yelled the German father, who still didn’t know who I was supposed to be. Now that he was outnumbered, Astros Cap wasn’t so tough anymore. He raised his hands, signaling the others to back down. “Hold on,” he said meekly. “This is all just a big misunderstanding. There’s no need to get nasty.” “Yes there is!” I yelled. “He stole my wallet!” The mob grew even angrier. “You mugged an innocent koala?” a grandmother shouted at Astros Cap.

It is hard to imagine a more elegant table at which to share a meal. Yet here it sits-never used, never disturbed-accompanied by a single chair. This table harks back to a different era, a better time in the life of Susan's family, when owning this house in this part of Chicago signaled the achievement of middle-class African American respectability. Before the economic anchors of this far South Side neighborhood closed down-the steel yards in the 1960's, the historic Pullman railway car company in the early 1980's, and the mammoth Sherwin-Williams paint factory in 1995-Roseland was a community with decent-paying, stable jobs. It was a good place to raise your kids. As the jobs left, the drugs arrived. 'It got worse, it changed.' Susan says, 'There's too much violence...unnecessary violence at that.' Given what her family has been through, this is more than a bit of an understatement. Susan's brother was shot in broad daylight just one block away. Her great-grandmother has fled to a meager retirement out west. Susan's family would like nothing more than to find a better place to live, safer streets and a home that isn't crumbling around them. Yet despite all its ills, this house is the only thing keeping Susan, Devin, and Lauren off the streets. They have spent the past few months surviving on cash income so low that it adds up to less than $2 per person, per day. With hardly a cent to their names, they have nowhere else to go.

A fun fact that my grandmother taught me about jewelweed is that it often grows near poison ivy plants which, she said, was nature’s way of helping us know how to counteract the ivy’s itchy effects.

It was an endless churn, baby after baby, born to the young and raised in families that spanned five or six generations because so few years separated grandmothers and mothers and daughters—and because the girls couldn't take care of them without help. All that mattered to people, it seemed, was the endless creation of life itself: the quality of it was never evaluated and never came into the equation.

Alone in her labor, and sore afraid, Queen Argoel gave over her heart in prayer, that the baby might be safely delivered; and she cried out, seeking in her suffering those same gods, whose names she had learned at her grandmother’s knee. Especially, did she call upon Arawn, ruler of the other-world; and no sooner had the goddess-name gone up, but the dam breaks, and the babe is born, and straightaway lets forth a great cry, nor holding back its force. And Queen Argoel, her eyes full with tears, did raise the child to her breast, saying,—The babe too remembers Arawn; hear, how he names Her by Name. And the babe was calmed, and did sup, and then take his rest; wherefore it was sayd thereafter of Gorbonianus, that oft-times

Annalisa didn’t like her grandmother’s answer. “What would you do if you were in my shoes? Just end it and move on?” Nonna resumed her chore, cleaning the next dish. Finally, she said, “No. This is a decision between you, your heart, and God. And this is a part of growing up. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will support your decision.” Annalisa stopped. “You will?” Nonna gave a firm nod. “Your parents and I have raised you to the best of our abilities, and I’m very proud of the woman you’re becoming. Whatever you decide will be the right decision.

So that’s what Cerise does?” The old woman nodded with a serene smile. “The path of the lightning blade. Very old art. Very hard to learn.” She picked up a small letter opener from a narrow side table and raised it straight up. A thin streak of brilliant white dashed down the blade. Damn it all to hell. Grandmother Az smiled. “Who did you think taught her?” “Her father.” “Spoken like a man.

Since when do you care, Cam?” I set my whisky glass down and stepped up to her, meeting her toe to toe. Her breath hitched as she met my gaze, our bodies almost touching.  “I care about you,” I whispered. “It may be crazy. I may not have a single shot in hell with you. But I care, Hal. I care a lot. And I like you more than I should.” She swallowed hard, her gaze dancing with something I couldn’t quite read. “It is crazy. Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you want me.” “I do want you. I want you like a garden wants the sun. When I see you, I can’t see anything else. I want you and no one else. Maybe I’ve always wanted you.” I didn’t care if I sounded like some crazy country poet saying those things, I meant every word.  “So you bullied me? Because you liked me?” “I wasn't raised to express my emotions in a healthy way, I was terrible to you for a lot of reasons, Haley. Reasons it took me years of therapy to figure out. Some of those reasons had nothing to do with you. One of those reasons was that I liked you but I also felt threatened by you. And my teenage, dumbass, hormone-riddled brain didn't know how to process more than one feeling at a time. I'm not that guy anymore, though. I've grown up.” “Threatened by me? What did I ever do to threaten you?” I sucked in a breath. This conversation had gone through my head a thousand times, and now it was here. Being honest fucking sucked sometimes, but I was going to be truthful.  “You didn't do anything. It was more that you represented change. Nothing ever changes in Citrus Cove. People are born, live, and die here. But one day the Bently girls show up out of nowhere. And, let me tell you it took dozens of hours and thousands of dollars of therapy to figure out why it was only ever you I was terrible to, but you coming to town, it meant that things don't stay the same forever. I didn't know that was why at the time, but you represented the possibility of more, but also the possibility of loss. And we had just lost my grandmother and I couldn't deal with something new. All that, and I had a stupid boyhood crush on you. But I'm not a boy anymore.” “No, you’re not,” she said, the corner of her mouth tugging. “You’ve grown up.

This morning, my grandmother stretched out her hand to feel the air, then raised her head to the sky and said, “It's fig harvest time.” She sat silently for the rest of the day. My friend, it seems that we all yearn for even the smallest details and simplest things that were once a part of our lives. Like the fig trees and the day of their harvest. Do you remember the day my mother made me cut a large pot filled with figs to make jam for us, and you came to help me? Do you remember the secrets and stories we shared over that pot of figs? And do you remember helping my grandmother knead the cookie dough afterwards? The taste of laughter, the smell of the house, and the warmth of our hearts as we dipped those cookies in the fig jam. My friend, will we ever make jam and cookies together again? Or will we continue to long for our memories, loved ones, friends, and fig trees? letters in wartime

You cannot change the truth. These are your children, but they came from somewhere else. And they are the children of those places and of those people as well Help them to know about their past and about their present Help them to know that they are from extended families, that they have only one parent or set of parents, but that they have more mothers and fathers. They have grandmothers, godmothers, birth mothers, mother countries, mother earth. They have grandfathers, godfathers, birth fathers, and fatherlands. They have family by birth and by adoption. They have family by choice and by chance. Childhood is short; They are our children to raise; they are our children to love; and then they are citizens of the world. What we do to them creates the world that we live in. Give them life. Give them their truth. Give them love. Give them all that they came with, Give them all that they grow with. Your children do not belong to you, but they belong with you. You cannot keep them from what is theirs, but you can keep loving them. You do not own your children, but they are your own.

When they were children, Mama’s elder sister had been dubbed the smart one and Mama the beautiful one. This was how my grandmother had raised them. As if a woman could not be both beautiful and smart.

She is to be coherent!” Master’s fury could be heard even through the drug's effect. “Now I will have to raise the volts, thanks to your compassion!” Grandmother’s cries dragged out deep, sounding like slow laughter in a tunnel. “And to atone, you too will endure the fate you save her from. Do I not have enough to think of without worrying over your fretful silliness! I am the Order’s Master,

I feel a bit like my grandmother. She lived through the Great Depression and some real hard times. Once you’ve been through that, it stays with you for a long time. I’m not sure it ever leaves really. So, I do feel joy now, but there’s still that nagging feeling that it might all go away. Even later in life when my grandmother knew there was really no possibility of her going hungry, she always had this thing about food. With Tesla, I decided to raise a huge amount of money just in case something terrible happens.” Musk

Having the job makes it easier,” he said, sitting opposite her. “Keeps my mind off things.” He would not say anything about his spy operation. “My job isn’t helping me at all.” She waved her hand up, then let it flop back onto her arm. “Job?” Marco asked. “Taking care of my grandmother and sister,” Shay said. “My grandmother’s diabetic. She needs insulin shots. And my sister is just, well.” Shay looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You have a little sister?” “I’m the little brother, so you’ll get no sympathy from me.

And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos. I saw these ghettos driving back from Dr. Jones’s home. They were the same ghettos I had seen in Chicago all those years ago, the same ghettos where my mother was raised, where my father was raised. Through the windshield I saw the mark of these ghettos—the abundance of beauty shops, churches, liquor stores, and crumbling housing—and I felt the old fear. Through the windshield I saw the rain coming down in sheets.

So when can I meet your young man?” “He isn’t my young man.” Anna shook her head, rose, and found something fascinating to stare at out the window. “He was my employer, and he is a gentleman, so he and his brothers came to my aid.” “Fine-looking fellow,” Grandmama remarked innocently. “You’ve met him?” “Morgan and I ran into him and his younger brother when she took me to the park yesterday. Couple of handsome devils. In my day, bucks like that would have been brought to heel.” “This isn’t your day”—Anna smiled—“but as you are widowed, you shouldn’t feel compelled to exercise restraint on my behalf.” “Your dear grandfather gave me permission to remarry, you know.” Grandmother peered at a tray of sweets as she spoke. “At the time, I told him I could never love another, and I won’t—not in the way I loved him.” “But?” Anna turned curious eyes on her grandmother and waited. “But he knew me better than I know myself. Life is short, Anna James, but it can be long and short at the same time if you’re lonely. I think that was part of your brother’s problem.” “What do you mean?” Anna asked, not wanting to point out the premature use of the past tense. “He was too alone up there in Yorkshire.” Grandmother bit into a chocolate. “The only boy, then being raised by an old man, too isolated. There’s a reason boys are sent off to school at a young age. Put all those barbarians together, and they somehow civilize each other.” “Westhaven wasn’t sent to school until he was fourteen,” Anna said. “He is quite civilized, as are his brothers.” “Civilized, handsome, well heeled, titled.” Grandmother looked up from the tray of sweets. “What on earth is not to like?” Anna