Raising A Child Alone Quotes

Could you bring back a man without a head?” Arya asked. “Just the once, not six times. Could you?” “I have no magic, child. Only prayers. That first time, his lordship had a hole right through him and blood in his mouth, I knew there was no hope. So when his poor torn chest stopped moving, I gave him the good god’s own kiss to send him on his way. I filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him, down his throat to lungs and heart and soul. The last kiss it is called, and many a time I saw the old priests bestow it on the Lord’s servants as they died. I had given it a time or two myself, as all priests must. But never before had I felt a dead man shudder as the fire filled him, nor seen his eyes come open. It was not me who raised him, my lady. It was the Lord. R’hllor is not done with him yet. Life is warmth, and warmth is fire, and fire is God’s and God’s alone.” Arya felt tears well in her eyes. Thoros used a lot of words, but all they meant was no, that much she understood.

Blame or credit, does not belong to the child alone. Parents, those who raised the child, must be given equal credit, or blame. That does not change, when the child is one, twenty or ninety years old.

By raising a child we should also help raise our children's generation, not just raise him or her alone.

Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked. One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version: Where's my daddy? Is that my daddy? He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!" He is Foul Ol' Ron! No, that's not my daddy! It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version.

My wife was out and I was home alone with Emma when my mother called. She said, "Oh, so you're babysitting?" As politely as I could manage, I answered, "I call it fathering." She realized immediately what she had said and apologized. I realized that when she was a child, and again as a mother of young children, father's active involvement with their infants was so minimal that it could fairly be called baby-sitting.

I watched him as he lined up the ships in bottles on his deck, bringing them over from the shelves where they usually sat. He used an old shirt of my mother's that had been ripped into rags and began dusting the shelves. Under his desk there were empty bottles- rows and rows of them we had collected for our future shipbuilding. In the closet were more ships- the ships he had built with his own father, ships he had built alone, and then those we had made together. Some were perfect, but their sails browned; some had sagged or toppled over the years. Then there was the one that had burst into flames in the week before my death. He smashed that one first. My heart seized up. He turned and saw all the others, all the years they marked and the hands that had held them. His dead father's, his dead child's. I watched his as he smashed the rest. He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death, and afterward he stood in the guest room/den surrounded by green glass. The bottle, all of them, lay broken on the floor, the sails and boat bodies strewn among them. He stood in the wreckage. It was then that, without knowing how, I revealed myself. In every piece of glass, in every shard and sliver, I cast my face. My father glanced down and around him, his eyes roving across the room. Wild. It was just for a second, and then I was gone. He was quiet for a moment, and then he laughed- a howl coming up from the bottom of his stomach. He laughed so loud and deep, I shook with it in my heaven. He left the room and went down two doors to my beadroom. The hallway was tiny, my door like all the others, hollow enough to easily punch a fist through. He was about to smash the mirror over my dresser, rip the wallpaper down with his nails, but instead he fell against my bed, sobbing, and balled the lavender sheets up in his hands. 'Daddy?' Buckley said. My brother held the doorknob with his hand. My father turned but was unable to stop his tears. He slid to the floor with his fists, and then he opened up his arms. He had to ask my brother twice, which he had never to do do before, but Buckley came to him. My father wrapped my brother inside the sheets that smelled of me. He remembered the day I'd begged him to paint and paper my room purple. Remembered moving in the old National Geographics to the bottom shelves of my bookcases. (I had wanted to steep myself in wildlife photography.) Remembered when there was just one child in the house for the briefest of time until Lindsey arrived. 'You are so special to me, little man,' my father said, clinging to him. Buckley drew back and stared at my father's creased face, the fine bright spots of tears at the corners of his eyes. He nodded seriously and kissed my father's cheek. Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult. 'Hold still,' my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.

My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey and Grandma Lynn and Samuel and Hal, but my father kept him stepping lightly, son gingerly monitoring father every morning and every evening as if, without such vigilance, he would lose him. We stood- the dead child and the living- on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forver. To please us both was an impossibility. ... 'Please don't let Daddy die, Susie,' he whispered. 'I need him.' When I left my brother, I walked out past the gazebo and under the lights hanging down like berries, and I saw the brick paths branching out as I advanced. I walked until the bricks turned to flat stones and then to small, sharp rocks and then to nothing but churned earth for miles adn miles around me. I stood there. I had been in heaven long enough to know that something would be revealed. And as the light began to fade and the sky to turn a dark, sweet blue as it had on the night of my death, I saw something walking into view, so far away I could not at first make out if it was man or woman, child or adult. But as moonlight reached this figure I could make out a man and, frightened now, my breathing shallow, I raced just far enough to see. Was it my father? Was it what I had wanted all this time so deperately? 'Susie,' the man said as I approached and then stopped a few feet from where he stood. He raised his arms up toward me. 'Remember?' he said. I found myself small again, age six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and he was fifty-six and my father had taken us to visit. We danced so slowly to a song that on Earth had always made my grandfather cry. 'Do you remember?' he asked. 'Barber!' 'Adagio for Strings,' he said. But as we danced and spun- none of the herky-jerky awkwardness of Earth- what I remembered was how I'd found him crying to this music and asked him why. 'Sometimes you cry,' Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.' He had held me against him then, just briefly, and then I had run outside to play again with Lindsey in what seemed like my grandfather's huge backyard. We didn't speak any more that night, but we danced for hours in that timeless blue light. I knew as we danced that something was happening on Earth and in heaven. A shifting. The sort of slow-to-sudden movement that we'd read about in science class one year. Seismic, impossible, a rending and tearing of time and space. I pressed myself into my grandfather's chest and smelled the old-man smell of him, the mothball version of my own father, the blood on Earth, the sky in heaven. The kumquat, skunk, grade-A tobacco. When the music stopped, it cold have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfateher took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.

The Ashanti, he reminded me, are guided by, and survive through, the forces of kinship and ancestral linkage. "We take care of each other on earth," he said. "If a family member asks for help, I give it. When a family member needs money for school fees or hospital bills, I send it. And my whole extended family loves you as if you are their child. We take care of each other's children. We raise each other's children. My cousins are my brothers and sisters. My aunts are also my mothers. Your aunts are your mothers, especially Auntie Harriet because she is my eldest sister. You will never be alone in this world." "And do you really believe our ancestors are watching over us?" I asked. He smiled. "I believe in the power of remembrance," he said. "And I believe love does not die with the body.

But what if your kid runs into the street in front of a car? Don't you have to use Method I?" ... If a child develops a habit of running into the street, a parent might first try to talk to the child about the dangers of cars, walk her around the edge of the yard, and tell her that anything beyond is not safe, show her a picture of a child hit by a car, build a fence around the yard, or watch her when she is playing in the front yard for a couple of days, reminding her each time she goes beyond the limits. Even if I took the punishment approach, I would never risk my child's life on the assumption that punishment alone would keep her from going into the street. I would want to employ more certain methods in any event.

Mandalorians are surprisingly unconcerned with biological lineage. Their definition of offspring or parent is more by relationship than birth: adoption is extremely common, and it’s not unusual for soldiers to take war orphans as their sons or daughters if they impress them with their aggression and tenacity. They also seem tolerant of marital infidelity during long separations, as long as any child resulting from it is raised by them. Mandalorians define themselves by culture and behavior alone. It is an affinity with key expressions of this culture—loyalty, strong self-identity, emphasis on physical endurance and discipline—that causes some ethnic groups such as those of Concord Dawn in particular to gravitate toward Mandalorian communities, thereby reinforcing a common set of genes derived from a wide range of populations. The instinct to be a protective parent is especially dominant. They have accidentally bred a family-oriented warrior population, and continue to reinforce it by absorbing like-minded individuals and groups.

A therapist who fears dependence will tell his patient, sometimes openly, that the urge to rely is pathologic. In doing so he denigrates a cardinal tool. A parent who rejects a child's desire to depend raises a fragile person. Those children, grown to adulthood, are frequently among those who come for help. Shall we tell them again that no one can find an art to lean on, that each alone must work to ease a private sorrow? Then we shall repeat and experiment already conducted; many know its result only too well. If patient and therapist are to proceed together down a curative path, they must allow limbic regulation and its companion moon, dependence, to make the revolutionary magic. Many therapists believe that reliance fosters a detrimental dependency. Instead, they say, patients should be directed to "do it for themselves" - as if they possess everything but the wit to throw that switch and get on with their lives. But people do not learn emotional modulation as they do geometry or the names of state capitals. They absorb the skill from living in the presence of an adept external modulator, and they learn it implicitly. Knowledge leaps the gap from one mind to the other, but the learner does not experience the transferred information as an explicit strategy. Instead, a spontaneous capacity germinates and becomes a natural part of the self, like knowing how to ride a bike or tie one's shoes. The effortful beginnings fade and disappear from memory. (171)

I grew up in an environment where the onus of raising a child was not on the parents alone but of the entire community. The logic is in that a child who becomes a burden or an armed robber becomes a threat not only to the parents but to a whole society!

But I don't know, Wesley. This thing makes me think, too. S'pose we'd got Elnora when she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living alone, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?" "You bet your life!" cried Wesley, warmly. "Loving anybody don't hurt them. We wouldn't have done anything but love her. You can't hurt a child loving it. She'd have learned to work, be sensible, study, and grown into a woman with us, without suffering like a poor homeless dog." "But you don't get the point, Wesley. She would have grown into a fine woman with us; just seems as if Elnora was born to be fine, but as we would have raised her, would her heart ever have known the world as it does now? Where's the anguish, Wesley, that child can't comprehend? Seeing what she's seen of her mother hasn't hardened her. She can understand any mother's sorrow. Living life from the rough side has only broadened her. Where's the girl or boy burning with shame, or struggling to find a way, that will cross Elnora's path and not get a lift from her? She's had the knocks, but there'll never be any of the thing you call 'false pride' in her. I guess we better keep out. Maybe Kate Comstock knows what she's doing. Sure as you live, Elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love.

We'd all like to see our poems walking alone in the world. Like children reared to be independent adults. Some parents raise a child conservatively (that is, with no exposure to the darker things awaiting them beyond the door), but you can see how that's a mistake right? There's no way to know how best to prepare a child for the future. No way to know how to write a publishable poem -- I'm not saying safe poems don't get published. Or that sheltered children can't succeed. Just that you write the best poems you can and send them out. Sometimes they return home weeping. Sometimes they make their own way.

But sometimes children do not connect or reconnect so easily. They may feel so isolated that they retreat into a corner, or come out aggressively with both arms swinging. They may be annoying, obnoxious, or downright infuriating as they try desperately to signal us that they need more connection. These situations call for creating more playtime, not doling out punishment or leaving the lonely child all alone.

A Credo for Parents of Spirited Children 1. You’re not alone. According to the personality research 10 to 15 percent of all children living in this country fit the description of the spirited child. That means that there are millions of parents who empathize with you and understand the challenges you face. Your child is not an oddity or a freak. You are not the world’s worst parent. You are not the only one. You are among friends.

All the values that once informed the way we raise our children - the cultivation of curiosity, the inculcation of character, the instillment of a sense of membership in one's community, the development of the capacity for democratic citizenship, let alone any emphasis on the pleasure and freedom of play, the part of childhood where you actually get to be a child - all these are gone ... We are not teaching to the test; we're living to it.

When hybrid meets the fallen seed The virgin seedling flies; An orphaned waif shall call to me When blossom meets the skies. The child of doubt will find his rest And meet his virgin bride; A dragon shorn will live again, Rejecting Eden’s pride. A slayer comes and with his host He fights the last of thee; But faith alone shall win the war, The test of those set free. A king shall rise of Arthur’s mold, The prophet’s book in hand; He takes the sword from mountain stone To rescue captive bands.

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

At the time, I was in the middle of writing my novel and could barely find a spare moment to write a paragraph. I used that time to lock myself away and wrote three chapters that weekend. But what stood out the most was listening to Mvula's Father, Father while crafting the scene in which Pam Allen reaches her breaking point and doesn't know if she can handle the possibility of raising another child alone. The song's arrangement was so beautiful and haunting and evoked the right amount of sadness to help me write the emotional scene.

One of the biggest shifts in the last decade of anthropology, one of the discoveries in the field that has changed everything, is the realization that we evolved as cooperative breeders. Bringing up kids in a nuclear family is a novelty, a blip on the screen of human family life. We never did child rearing alone, isolated and shut off from others, or with just one other person, the child’s father. It is arduous and anomalous and it’s not the way it “should” be. Indeed, for as long as we have been, we have relied on other females—kin and the kindly disposed—to help us raise our offspring. Mostly we lived as Nisa did—in rangy, multifamily bands that looked out for one another, took care of one another, and raised one another’s children. You still see it in parts of the Caribbean today, where any adult in a small town can tell any kid to toe the line, and does, and the kids listen. Or in Hawaii, where kids and parents alike depend on hanai relationships—aunties and uncles, indispensible honorary relations who take a real interest in an unrelated child’s well-being and education. No, it wasn’t fire or hunting or the heterosexual dyad that gave us a leg up, anthropologists now largely concur; it was our female Homo ancestors holding and handling and caring for and even nursing the babies of other females. That is in large part why Homo sapiens flourished and flourish still, while other early hominins and prehominins bit the dust. This shared history of interdependence, of tending and caring, might explain the unique capacity women have for deep friendship with other women. We have counted on one another for child care, sanity, and survival literally forever. The loss of your child weighs heavily on me in this web of connectedness, because he or she is a little bit my own.

She knows if the test shows another girl growing in her womb, all of the possible outcomes are wrenching. Jasu can demand she have an abortion, right there at the clinic if they had the money. Or he could simply cast her out, forcing her to endure the shame of raising the child alone. She would be shunned, like the other beecharis in the village. But even this, becoming an outcast from her home and community, would not be as bad as the alternative. She cannot face the agony of giving birth, of holding her baby in her arms, only to have it taken away again. Kavita knows in her soul she simply will not survive that.

The attempt to define free will is the granddaddy of these pointless quests. We understand what it is to be coerced. It is to be a prisoner frog-marched down a hill. Coercion is something tangible. Freedom is the absence of coercion, nothing more. Events from childhood do not coerce our personalities in adulthood. We are not frog-marched by parental spankings at age six into being guilt-ridden thirty-year-olds. Our genes do not coerce our adulthood. Unlike spankings, they have a substantial statistical effect on our personality, but we are not frog-marched into being alcoholics even if our biological parents are alcoholics. Even having the genetic predisposition, there are tactics we can adopt to avoid alcoholism. We can, for example, shun drinking altogether. There are many more teetotal people with alcoholic parents than you would expect there to be by chance alone. Absent coercion, we are free. Freedom of the will, choice, the possibility of change, mean nothing more-absolutely nothing more than the absence of coercion. This means simply that we are free to change many things about ourselves. Indeed, the main facts of this book—that depressives often become nondepressives, that lifelong panickers become panic free, that impotent men become potent again, that adults reject the sex role they were raised with, that alcoholics become abstainers—demonstrate this. None of this means that therapists, parents, genes, good advice, and even dyspepsia do not influence what we do. None of this denies that there are limits on how much we can change. It only means that we are not prisoners.

It was like the misery felt by an old man who has lived to see his son's body swing on the gallows. He begins to keen and weep for his boy, watching the raven gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. The wisdom of age is worthless to him. Morning after morning, he wakes to remember that his child is gone; he has no interest in living on until another heir is born in the hall, now that his first-born has entered death's dominion forever. He gazes sorrowfully at his son's dwelling, the banquet hall bereft of all delight, the windswept hearthstone; the horsemen are sleeping, the warriors under ground; what was is no more. No tunes from the harp, no cheer raised in the yard. Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed and sings a lament; everything seems too large, the steadings and the fields.

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone;—but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For

It means I’m not alone in this. It means Ben is here with me. It means my life, that felt empty and miserable, now feels difficult but manageable. I can be a single mother. I can raise this child by myself. I can tell this child all about his father. About how his father was a gentle man, a kind man, a funny man, a good man. If it’s a girl, I can tell her to find a man like her father. If it’s a boy, I can tell him to be a man like his father. I can tell him his father would have been so proud of him. If he’s gay, I can tell him to be like his father and find a man like his father—which would be the best of all worlds. If she grows up to be a lesbian, she won’t need to be or find anyone like her father, but she’ll still love him. She’ll know that she came from a man that would have loved her. She’ll know she came from two people that loved each other fiercely. She’ll know not to settle for anything less than a love that changes her life.

Parenting pressures have resculpted our priorities so dramatically that we simply forget. In 1975 couples spent, on average, 12.4 hours alone together per week. By 2000 they spent only nine. What happens, as this number shrinks, is that our expectations shrink with it. Couple-time becomes stolen time, snatched in the interstices or piggybacked onto other pursuits. Homework is the new family dinner. I was struck by Laura Anne’s language as she described this new reality. She said the evening ritual of guiding her sons through their assignments was her “gift of service.” No doubt it is. But this particular form of service is directed inside the home, rather than toward the community and for the commonweal, and those kinds of volunteer efforts and public involvements have also steadily declined over the last few decades, at least in terms of the number of hours of sweat equity we put into them. Our gifts of service are now more likely to be for the sake of our kids. And so our world becomes smaller, and the internal pressure we feel to parent well, whatever that may mean, only increases: how one raises a child, as Jerome Kagan notes, is now one of the few remaining ways in public life that we can prove our moral worth. In other cultures and in other eras, this could be done by caring for one’s elders, participating in social movements, providing civic leadership, and volunteering. Now, in the United States, child-rearing has largely taken their place. Parenting books have become, literally, our bibles. It’s understandable why parents go to such elaborate lengths on behalf of their children. But here’s something to think about: while Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods makes it clear that middle-class children enjoy far greater success in the world, what the book can’t say is whether concerted cultivation causes that success or whether middle-class children would do just as well if they were simply left to their own devices. For all we know, the answer may be the latter.

When you are drunk, your understanding of your true self changes. This is the crucial implication of drunkenness as myopia. The old disinhibition idea implied that what was revealed when someone got drunk was a kind of stripped-down, distilled version of their sober self—without any of the muddying effects of social nicety and propriety. You got the real you. As the ancient saying goes, In vino veritas: “In wine there is truth.” But that’s backward. The kinds of conflicts that normally keep our impulses in check are a crucial part of how we form our character. All of us construct our personality by managing the conflict between immediate, near considerations and more complicated, longer-term considerations. That is what it means to be ethical or productive or responsible. The good parent is someone who is willing to temper their own immediate selfish needs (to be left alone, to be allowed to sleep) with longer-term goals (to raise a good child). When alcohol peels away those longer-term constraints on our behavior, it obliterates our true self.

glasses as bait, place the child where he can easily reach them. Look him squarely in the eye. When he reaches out to grab them, don’t pull back; don’t defend yourself. Calmly say, “No.” If anything, lower your voice; don’t raise it. Don’t sound more serious than usual. Remember, you are establishing a vocal pattern to be used the rest of his youth. If he reaches out to touch your glasses, again say, “No,” and thump or swat his hand with a light object so as to cause him a little pain, but not necessarily enough to cry. He will pull his hand back and try to comprehend the association of grabbing the glasses with the pain. Inevitably, he will return to the bait to test his new theory. Sure enough, reaching for the glasses again causes pain, and the pain is accompanied with a quiet, little “No.” It may take one or two more tries for him to give up his career as a glasses snatcher, but he will. Through this process, the child will associate the pain with the word “No.” There quickly comes a time when your word alone is sufficient to gain obedience.

At last they came to the lower slopes of the great mountains. Here she met a wild and bedraggled boy. He stumbled across her when she had stopped to rest and suckle the baby. The boy stared at the unlikely pair for a moment, then seated himself on the ground at a respectful distance, obviously preparing to converse. He was the strangest looking boy she had ever seen. Evidently a changeling like herself, for he was tall and straight with long slender limbs, but his hair was golden like the sun and his eyes a deep blue like the sky. He looked to be about fifteen years old, not quite a man, yet man enough to survive. She guessed he must have originated from the fabled district of Shor, in the far south, where it was rumoured that all the people were changelings, and all golden-haired. Astelle tensed, fully expecting Torking to deliver one of his pain bolts to the curious boy, but the child seemed unperturbed, and simply carried on suckling. This boy's attention was obviously not deemed as a threat. She relaxed and smiled at the youth. He returned the smile, white teeth startling against his tanned and dirty face. ‘Why are you travelling all alone?’ he asked. Encouraged by Torking's mindwhispers, Astelle managed to concoct a story very close to the truth. ‘As you can see, my child is rather unusual,’ she explained. ‘I could not bear to raise him among mortals who would constantly deride and insult him – and his father has left me, so I had no choice but to run from my tribe.’ Sympathy appeared in the deep blue eyes. ‘I understand that very well,’ he said. ‘I am an escaped slave. I was captured in infancy, and have no memory of my own people, but all my life I have been mocked and abused because I am different. My name is Bren. I would like to travel with you, if you don't mind. I could take care of you both.’ ‘Keep him,’ Torking mindwhispered. ‘He will be useful to fish and hunt for us. But do not tell him that I speak to you.’ Astelle smiled. ‘Thank you Bren,’ she said. ‘I will be glad of your company. I am called Astelle.’ ‘A Faen name...’ he said wonderingly. They began to climb the mountains of Clor.

There are wonderful examples in Scripture of the power of prayer. Nothing seems to be too great, too hard, or too difficult for prayer to do. It has obtained things that seemed impossible and out of reach. It has won victories over fire, air, earth, and water. Prayer opened the Red Sea. Prayer brought water from the rock and bread from heaven. Prayer made the sun stand still. Prayer brought fire from the sky on Elijah's sacrifice. Prayer turned the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Prayer overthrew the army of Sennacherib. Well might Mary, Queen of Scots, say, "I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men." Prayer has healed the sick. Prayer has raised the dead. Prayer has procured the conversion of souls. "The child of many prayers," said an old Christian to Augustine's mother, "shall never perish." Prayer, pains, and faith can do anything. Nothing seems impossible when a man has the Spirit of adoption. "Let me alone," is the remarkable saying of God to Moses, when Moses was about to intercede for the children of Israel. (Exod. xxxii. 10.) The Chaldee version has it "Leave off praying." So long as Abraham asked mercy for Sodom, the Lord went on giving. He never ceased to give till Abraham ceased to pray. Think of this. Is not this encouragement?

Our parents never structured our studies. "Let 'em learn what they like," my father used to say. "A child will eat a well-balanced diet if she's given a choice of wholesome foods and left alone. If a kid's body knows what it needs to grow and stay healthy, why wouldn't her mind, too?" To his friends he explained, "My girls have free run of the forest and public library. They have a mother who is around to fix them lunch and define any words don't know. School would only get in the way of that. Besides, if they went to school, they'd spend over two hours a day in the car. Lord knows I could use the company on those drives, but it's better for my kids to stay in the woods." So while other children were reciting their times tables and asking permission to get drinks of water, Eva and I were free to roam and learn as we pleased. Together we painted murals and made up plays, built forts, raised butterflies, and designed computer games. We made paper, concocted new recipes for cookies, edited newsletters, and caught minnows. We grew gourds and nursed fledglings and played with prisms, and our parents told the state that what we did was school. For years I studied what I wanted to, when and how I wanted to study it. One book led to another in a random pattern, meandering from interest to interest like a good conversation, and the only thing that connected them was their juxtaposition on the bookshelves in mother's workroom.

Why the Leaves Change Colour The first girl who was ever born with amber skin was Mother Nature’s own child. Her birth was from a seed Mother Nature planted in the darkest, purest, most fertile soil, and soon there was a flower, and the flower opened up to show the most beautiful little girl imaginable. One day when the little girl was playing, the Sky, who was her brother, jealous of how lovely she was and how happy and distracted their mother had been since she was born, stole her and placed her upon a star so far away from the earth, Mother Nature could not get to her. In her grief, Mother Nature took every leaf that existed on Earth and turned them amber. The baby girl raised herself on this star—after all, she was her mother’s child, fortitude became her. She became majestic, and independent, and knew how to cope with anything alone because she had always only known alone. When the girl was finally old enough to explore the universe by itself, she travelled across the stars, finding beauty in thousands of planets, but none where she really felt at home. Until, that is, she came upon a beautiful blue planet with amber leaves. Walking through golden leaves, she remembered who she was, and who her mother was, for this is the magic of the bond children have with their mothers. They will remember them even if they are millions of miles away; why do you think good mothers can say things like ‘I love you all the way around the universe’ and you just know they mean it and know not to question it? When Mother Nature felt in her bones that her child had returned, she took her into her arms and turned all the leaves to green again. But because the leaves of amber gold were how her girl found her again, it happens every single year in commemoration. We call it a season. We named it after Mother Nature’s only daughter. We called it Autumn.

I wanted to be alone.” “I see.” Except she didn’t, exactly. When had this child become a mystery to her own mother? “Why?” Sophie glanced at herself in the mirror, and Esther could only hope her daughter saw the truth: a lovely, poised woman—intelligent, caring, well dowered, and deserving of more than a stolen interlude with a convenient stranger and an inconvenient baby—Sophie’s brothers’ assurances notwithstanding. “I am lonely, that’s why.” Sophie’s posture relaxed with this pronouncement, but Esther’s consternation only increased. “How can you be lonely when you’re surrounded by loving family, for pity’s sake? Your father and I, your sisters, your brothers, even Uncle Tony and your cousins—we’re your family, Sophia.” She nodded, a sad smile playing around her lips that to Esther’s eyes made her daughter look positively beautiful. “You’re the family I was born with, and I love you too, but I’m still lonely, Your Grace. I’ve wished and wished for my own family, for children of my own, for a husband, not just a marital partner…” “You had many offers.” Esther spoke gently, because in Sophie’s words, in her calm, in her use of the present tense—“I am lonely”—there was an insight to be had. “Those offers weren’t from the right man.” “Was Baron Sindal the right man?” It was a chance arrow, but a woman who had raised ten children owned a store of maternal instinct. Sophie’s chin dropped, and she sighed. “I thought he was the right man, but it wasn’t the right offer, or perhaps it was, but I couldn’t hear it as such. And then there was the baby… It wouldn’t be the right marriage.” Esther took her courage in both hands and advanced on her daughter—her sensible daughter—and slipped an arm around Sophie’s waist. “Tell me about this baby. I’ve heard all manner of rumors about him, but you’ve said not one word.” She meant to walk Sophie over to the vanity, so she might drape Oma’s pearls around Sophie’s neck, but Sophie closed her eyes and stiffened. “He’s a good baby. He’s a wonderful baby, and I sent him away. Oh, Mama, I sent my baby away…” And then, for the first time in years, sensible Lady Sophia Windham cried on her mother’s shoulder as if she herself were once again a little, inconsolable baby. ***

From the moment she had stepped out from her wooden walls, the path ahead of him had been clearly marked, but he had been too blind to see it. A tosi woman and a Comanche, their pasts stained with tears and bloodshed, had little hope of coexisting happily with either race. To be as one, they had to walk alone, away from both their people. Where, that was the question. And Hunter had no answers. West, as the prophecy foretold? Into the great mountain ranges? The thought frightened him. He had been raised in open spaces, able to see into tomorrow, with the north wind whispering, the grass waving, the buffalo plentiful. What would he hunt? And how? He wouldn’t know what roots and nuts to gather. He wouldn’t know which plants made good medicine, which bad. Did he dare take a woman into an unknown land, uncertain if he could feed her, care for her, or protect her? What if she came with child? Winter, the time when babies cried. How would he stand tall like a man if his family starved? Hunter opened his eyes and sat up, raking his fingers through his damp hair. Looking skyward, he searched for Loretta’s Great One, the Almighty Father to whom she gave thanks for her food. At first he had been disgruntled by her prayers. Her God didn’t bring her the food; her husband did. Loretta had explained that her God led Hunter’s footsteps so his hunts were successful. Was her God up there in the sky, as she believed? Did he truly hear a man’s whispers, his thoughts? Hunter could see his own gods, Mother Earth, Mother Moon, Father Sun, the wind coming from the four directions. It was easy to believe in what he could see. Why did Loretta’s God hide himself? Was he terrible ugly? Did he hide only from Comanches? Loretta said he was father to all, even Indians. Peace filled Hunter. With so many Great Ones, both his and hers, surely they would be blessed. Relaxing his body, he surrendered himself to fate. The Great Ones would guide them. Loretta’s God would lead his footsteps in the hunt when his own gods failed him. Together he and Loretta would find a new place where the Comanche and tosi tivo could live as one, where Hunter could sing the songs of the People and keep their ways alive. Rising, Hunter turned back toward the village, his decision made, his heart torn, acutely aware that the prophecy had foretold this moment long ago.

But if the same man is in a quiet corner of a bar, drinking alone, he will get more depressed. Now there’s nothing to distract him. Drinking puts you at the mercy of your environment. It crowds out everything except the most immediate experiences.2 Here’s another example. One of the central observations of myopia theory is that drunkenness has its greatest effect in situations of “high conflict”—where there are two sets of considerations, one near and one far, that are in opposition. So, suppose that you are a successful professional comedian. The world thinks you are very funny. You think you are very funny. If you get drunk, you don’t think of yourself as even funnier. There’s no conflict over your hilariousness that alcohol can resolve. But suppose you think you are very funny and the world generally doesn’t. In fact, whenever you try to entertain a group with a funny story, a friend pulls you aside the next morning and gently discourages you from ever doing it again. Under normal circumstances, the thought of that awkward conversation with your friend keeps you in check. But when you’re drunk? The alcohol makes the conflict go away. You no longer think about the future corrective feedback regarding your bad jokes. Now it is possible for you to believe that you are actually funny. When you are drunk, your understanding of your true self changes. This is the crucial implication of drunkenness as myopia. The old disinhibition idea implied that what was revealed when someone got drunk was a kind of stripped-down, distilled version of their sober self—without any of the muddying effects of social nicety and propriety. You got the real you. As the ancient saying goes, In vino veritas: “In wine there is truth.” But that’s backward. The kinds of conflicts that normally keep our impulses in check are a crucial part of how we form our character. All of us construct our personality by managing the conflict between immediate, near considerations and more complicated, longer-term considerations. That is what it means to be ethical or productive or responsible. The good parent is someone who is willing to temper their own immediate selfish needs (to be left alone, to be allowed to sleep) with longer-term goals (to raise a good child). When alcohol peels away those longer-term constraints on our behavior, it obliterates our true self. So who were the Camba, in reality? Heath says their society was marked by a singular lack of “communal expression.” They were itinerant farmworkers. Kinship ties were weak. Their daily labor tended to be solitary, the hours long.

When Oliver called time a few moments later, she’d beaten them all. But she’d beaten Mr. Pinter by only one bird. “It appears, Lady Celia, that you’ve won a new rifle,” the duke said graciously. “No,” she answered. They all stared at her. “It doesn’t seem sporting to win a challenge only because one of my opponents had a faulty firearm. Which we provided to him, by the way.” “Don’t worry,” Mr. Pinter drawled. “I won’t hold the fault firearm against you and your brothers.” “That’s not the point. This should be fair, and it isn’t.” “Then we’ll move forward,” Oliver said, “and let the servants flush the grouse again. Pinter can take one more shot. That’s probably all that the misfire delayed him by. If he misses, then you’ve won squarely. If he hits his target then it’s a tie, and we’ll decide a tie breaker.” “That seems fair.” She glanced over at Mr. Pinter. “What do you say, sir?” “Whatever my lady wishes.” His eyes met hers in a heated glance. She had the unsettling feeling that he referred to more than just the shooting. “Well, then,” she said lightly. “Let’s get on with it.” The beaters headed forward to flush the grouse, but either because of where the grouse had last settled or because of the beaters’ position, the birds rose farther away than was practical. “Damn it all,” Gabe uttered. “He won’t make a shot from here.” “You can ignore this one, and we’ll have them flushed again,” Celia said. But Mr. Pinter raised his gun to follow their flight. With a flash and the repugnant smell of black powder igniting, the gun fired and white smoke filled the air. She saw a bird fall. No, not one bird. He’d hit two birds with an impossible shot. Her breath lodged in her throat. She’d hit two with one shot a few times, due to how they clustered and how well the birdshot scattered, but to do it at such a distance… She glanced at him, astonished. No one had ever beaten her-and certainly not with such an amazing shot. Mr. Pinter gazed at her steadily as he handed off the gun to a servant. “It appears that I’ve won, my lady.” Her mouth went dry. “It does indeed.” Gabe hooted pleased at having escaped buying her a rifle. The duke and the viscount scowled, while Devonmont just looked amused as usual. All of that fell away as Mr. Pinter’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “Well done, Pinter,” Oliver said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You obviously more than earned a kiss.” For a moment, raw hunger flickered in his eyes. Then it was as if a veil descended over his face, for his features turned blank. He walked up to her, bent his head… And kissed her on the forehead. Hot color flooded her cheeks. How dared he kiss her last night as if she were a woman, and then treat her like a child in front of her suitors! Or worse, a woman beneath his notice! “Thank heavens that’s done,” she said loftily, trying to retain some dignity. The men all laughed-except Mr. Pinter, who watched her with a shuttered expression. As the other gentleman crowded round to congratulate him on his fine shot, she plotted. She would make him answer for every remark, every embarrassment of this day, as soon as she had the chance to get him alone. Because no man made a fool of her and got away with it.

Besides, I know you loved my Lucy . . ." Here he turned away and covered his face with his hands. I could hear the tears in his voice. Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. I suppose there is something in a woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood. For when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly. I sat down beside him and took his hand. I hope he didn't think it forward of me, and that if her ever thinks of it afterwards he never will have such a thought. There I wrong him. I know he never will. He is too true a gentleman.I said to him, for I could see that his heart was breaking, "I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what you were to her. She and I were like sisters, and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble? I know what sorrows you have had, though I cannot measure the depth of them. If sympathy and pity can help in your affliction, won't you let me be of some little service, for Lucy's sake?" In an instant the poor dear fellow was overwhelmed with grief. It seemed to me that all that he had of late been suffering in silence found a vent at once. He grew quite hysterical,and raising his open hands, beat his palms together in a perfect agony of grief. He stood up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks. I felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly. With a sob he laid his head on my shoulder and cried like a wearied child, whilst he shook with emotion. We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother spirit is invoked. I felt this big sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of a baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it all was. After a little bit his sobs ceased, and he raised himself with an apology, though he made no disguise of his emotion. He told me that for days and nights past, weary days and sleepless nights, he had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow. There was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow was surrounded, he could speak freely. "I know now how I suffered," he said, as he dried his eyes, "but I do not know even yet, and none other can ever know, how much your sweet sympathy has been to me today. I shall know better in time, and believe me that, though I am not ungrateful now, my gratitude will grow with my understanding. You will let me be like a brother, will you not, for all our lives, for dear Lucy's sake?" "For dear Lucy's sake," I said as we clasped hands."Ay, and for your own sake," he added, "for if a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine today. If ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help,believe me, you will not call in vain. God grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life, but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know." He was so earnest, and his sorrow was so fresh, that I felt it would comfort him, so I said, "I promise.

Parenting “Aha!” Since God’s Word makes it clear that He alone is divine and He alone changes hearts, I knew I needed Him to help me parent differently. I knew I would have to parent with His goal in mind if I was going to be successful. Pleasing Him became my only focus that day. Nothing else mattered. This was the first truth I began to cling to in my desire to be a spiritual parent. This truth revealed to me that it was not my job to merely control my child’s behavior and by doing so somehow create a spiritual life for him or her. This was a real “Aha” for me. Nowhere in the Bible does God ask me to spend my days managing the deeds and actions of my child. Nowhere in Scripture am I warned that if I don’t “control” my child’s behavior, horrible things will happen. However, I have oftentimes assumed this role—and sometimes pursued it as an end in itself. After all, who doesn’t want children who behave beautifully at all times? For years I had naively assumed that as Christian parents we simply have babies, raise them in a Christian home, and then do our best as parents. We expose them to Christ and to God’s Word, we put them in the community of other believers, and then eventually … don’t they just choose to follow Him?

The Bible tells us, “the young woman was lovely and beautiful….” Not just lovely, not just beautiful, but lovely AND beautiful — that’s Esther. In the King James translation, she is described as “fair and beautiful”. The word “fair” comes from the word “to’ar”. This word, when literally translated, means lovely on the outside. Esther’s outward appearance was very pleasing.2 The word “beautiful” comes from the word “tobe”. This word, literally translated, goes far beyond external beauty. It means “good in the widest sense, used as a noun…. also as an adverb: beautiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, in favor, glad, good….. gracious, joyful, kindly…. loving, merry, most pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, well.”3 These words give us a much more accurate view of Esther: she is more than beautiful! Please take note that Esther’s circumstance did not dictate her attitude. Esther’s life does not sound easy by any means. First, she is living in a city that has not been entirely friendly to Jewish people, even though the captivity is over. On top of that, she has lost her parents and any other family other than Mordecai. In spite of these hardships, she is described as lovely and beautiful — inside and out! Esther has not allowed herself to become bitter over circumstances that were out of her control. This is a wonderful example for us to follow: as we are faithful to God, He is faithful to us. Rather than allowing situations to make us disagreeable, we need to keep our focus on the Lord. Allow Him to move through everything that comes to you, both good and bad. In the end, you are a child of the true King! Though great times and hard times, God is working out a perfect plan for you! These inner strengths and qualities in Esther are about to become necessary for her very survival. If the hardships of life in Persia could not make Esther bitter, another test of her character is about to come: Ahasuerus’ servants are out collecting young women as potential candidates to be queen. At first, such an opportunity may seem exciting, but consider that these young women are being given no choice in the matter. Possibly afraid, definitely alone, each were taken from their homes and families by force. So it was, when the king’s command and decree were heard, and when many young women were gathered at Shushan the citadel, under the custody of Hegai, that Esther also was taken to the king’s palace, into the care of Hegai the custodian of the women. Esther 2:8 NJKV After the virgins in the kingdom are gathered, they are taken to Hegai “the custodian of the women”. Hegai is going to “weed out” any women whom he thinks will not be suitable for the king. He will look them over and if they are pretty enough to keep around, he orders their beauty preparations. What will Hegai think when he meets Esther? Now the young woman pleased him, and she obtained his favor; so he readily gave beauty preparations to her, besides her allowance. Then seven choice maidservants were provided for her from the king’s palace, and he moved her and her maidservants to the best place in the house of the women. Esther 2:9 Esther impressed Hegai from the first, and he immediately agreed to begin her beauty preparations as well as her diet (“her allowance”). Esther is going on to “round two” in this “pageant”! Initially this may sound glamorous, but this is truly a “fish out of water” situation for Esther. Remember the description of the palace in chapter 1? Esther has never seen anything like the excess in Ahasuerus’ palace and, considering her background, is probably very uncomfortable. She has been raised to have a simple faith in God, and this palace may feel to her like one huge tribute to a man: Ahasuerus (and knowing him, it probably is!). Add this to her already isolated and lonely feeling that must have

While my father was out boozing, she'd read to me by the stub of a candle, a thread of soot twisting upwards from its pinched, meager flame. By her voice alone, she could raise up the old stories from the bones of their words and--lilting between shades of comedy and melodrama--turn the dreary space around me into a stage for my wildest imaginings.

No human being could help me or bring me the comfort I craved--not my husband, not my pastor, not my dearest friends. No, my soul had to face its long night of suffering alone--except, of course, for the presence of God.

am surprised to find myself raising my boys so much alone. I had anticipated we would do this together, us mothers, all bucking in and sharing the load. It wasn’t help I craved but company. They say it takes a village to raise a child and, I wondered, Where’s my village? We are not designed to live in nuclear families — the extended family model is imprinted in our DNA — yet most of us do. We’re so caught up in our own lives there’s no time to help out in anyone else’s. It is suggested to me that my reticence at asking for help or letting others in might be a side effect of having been born premature. Psychologists say, so vital is the wider network for the development of healthy, happy children that if we don’t have one, we must make one. For someone like me, that is a far more daunting proposition.

Mr. Nobley had entered the room before he noticed her. He groaned. “And here you are. Miss Erstwhile. You are infuriating and irritating, and yet I find myself looking for you. I would be grateful if you would send me away and make me swear to never return.” “You shouldn’t have told me that’s what you want, Mr. Nobley, because now you’re not going to get it.” “Then I must stay?” “Unless you want to risk me accusing you of ungentleman-like behavior at dinner, yes, I think you should stay. If I spend too much time alone today, I’m in real danger of doing a convincing impersonation of the madwoman in the attic.” He raised an eyebrow. “And how would that be different from--” “Sit down, Mr. Nobley,” she said. He sat in a chair on the opposite side of a small table. The chair creaked as he settled himself. She didn’t look at him, watching instead the rain on the window and the silvery shadows the wet light made of the room. She spent several moments in silence before she realized that it might be awkward, that conversation at such a time was obligatory. Now she could feel his gaze on her face and longed to crack the silence like the spine of a book, but she had nothing to say anymore. She’d lost all her thoughts in paint and rain. “You are reading Sterne,” he said at last. “May I?” He gestured to the book, and she handed it to him. Jane was remembering a scene from the film of Mansfield Park when suitor Henry Crawford read to Frances O-Connor’s character so sweetly, the sound created a passionate tension, the words themselves becoming his courtship. Jane glanced at Mr. Nobley’s somber face, and away again as his eyes flicked from the page to her. He began to read from the top. His voice was soft, melodious, strong, a man who could speak in a crowd and have people listen, but also a man who could persuade a child to sleep with a bedtime story. “The man who first transplanted the grape of Burgundy to the Cape of Good Hope (observe he was a Dutchman) never dreamt of drinking the same wine at the Cape, the same grape produced upon the French mountains--he was too phlegmatic for that--but undoubtedly he expected to drink some sort of vinous liquor; but whether good, bad, or indifferent--he knew enough of this world to know, that it did not depend upon his choice…” Mr. Nobley was trying very hard not to smile. His lips were tight; his voice scraped a couple of times. Jane laughed at him, and then he did smile. It gave her a little thwack of pleasure as though someone had flicked a finger against her heart. “Not very, er…” he said. “Interesting?” “I imagine not.” “But you read it well,” she said. He raised his brows. “Did I? Well, that is something.” They sat in silence a few moments, chuckling intermittently. Mr. Nobley began to read again suddenly, “Mynheer might possibly overset both in his new vineyard,” having to stop to laugh again. Aunt Saffronia walked by and peered into the dim room as she passed, her presence reminding Jane that this tryst might be forbidden by the Rules. Mr. Nobley returned to himself. “Excuse me,” he said, rising. “I have trespassed on you long enough.

Being a comedian is a nomadic, nocturnal existence that goes against the basic normalcy and consistency required of being a healthy participant in society, let alone being a healthy participant in raising a child. There were times in my life when I had one thing to do all day, but I still couldn’t get to it. “I gotta go to the post office, but I’d probably have to put on pants. And they’re only open till five. Looks like I’m going to have to do that next week.

I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. Two parents can’t raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community –– everybody –– to raise a child. The notion that the head is the one who brings in the most money is a patriarchal notion, that a woman –– and I have raised two children, alone –– is somehow lesser than a male head. Or that I am incomplete without the male. This is not true. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for white people or for black people. Why we are hanging onto it, I don’t know. It isolates people into little units –– people need a larger unit.

FREDERICK (taking Lee's head in his hands and looking at her) Oh...Lee, you are my whole world. (pausing) Good God! Have you been kissed tonight?! LEE (reacting, pushing Frederick's hands from her face) No. FREDERICK (reacting) Oh, yes, you have! LEE (quickly standing up, defensively) No. FREDERICK (raising his voice) You've been with someone! LEE (overlapping, running away from the bed) Stop accusing me! Lee runs into the kitchen, her hands tight around her chest. FREDERICK (offscreen) I'm too smart, Lee! You can't fool me! You're turning all red! Lee, fraught with emotion, briefly puts her outstretched hands on the refrigerator door, then turns around and leans against it, hugging herself, her blouse still unbuttoned, her hair still wet and bedraggled. LEE Leave me alone! Frederick enters the kitchen area and leans against the counter. FREDERICK (angrily) Oh, Christ! What's wrong with you?! LEE (leaning against the refrigerator, sighing) I'm sorry. FREDERICK Oh, couldn't you say something? You have to slither around behind my back! LEE (overlapping, her voice emotionally raised) I'm saying it now! FREDERICK So you met somebody else? LEE (sighing, nodding) Yeah. Frederick cringes, reacting. He puts his hand to his forehead; he sighs. LEE (walking into the bathroom) But you, God, you knew that was going to happen sooner or later. I can't live like this! FREDERICK (turning to face Lee in the bathroom, his arms crossed) Who is it? LEE (frantically putting things in her purse, glaring at Frederick) What's the difference?! It's just somebody I met! FREDERICK But who? Where did you meet him? LEE It doesn't make a difference! I have to move out! FREDERICK You are, you are my only connection to the world! Lee turns and faces Frederick in the bathroom doorway. LEE (gesturing emotionally) Oh, God, that's too much responsibility for me. It's not fair! I want a less complicated life, Frederick. I want a husband, maybe even a child before it's too late. FREDERICK (reacting, his face in his hand) Jesus...Jesus! LEE (gesturing, moving closer to Frederick) Oh, God, I don't even know what I want. FREDERICK (sighing heavily, reacting) Oh... LEE (rubbing Frederick's shoulder tenderly) Tch, oh, what do you get out of me, anyway? I mean... (laying her head against his shoulder, sighing deeply) it's not sexual anymore. It's certainly not intellectual. I mean, you're so superior to me in every way that-- Frederick furiously shakes Lee away. He pounds his fist against a cupboard. Lee, gasping, moves away. FREDERICK Please, don't patronize me! He puts his hand on his forehead, then turns to the offscreen Lee.

We must take literally what vision teaches us: namely, that through it we come in contact with the sun and the stars, that we are everywhere all at once, and that even our power to imagine ourselves elsewhere—"I am in Petersburg in my bed, in Paris, my eyes see the sun"—or to intend real beings wherever they are, borrows from vision and employs means we owe to it. Vision alone makes us learn that beings that are different, "exterior," foreign to one another, are yet absolutely together, are "simultaneity"; this is a mystery psychologists handle the way a child handles explosives. Robert Delaunay says succinctly, "The railroad track is the image of succession which comes closest to the parallel: the parity of the rails." The rails converge and do not converge; they converge in order to remain equidistant down below. The world is in accordance with my perspective in order to be independent of me, is for me in order to be without me, and to be the world. The "visual quale" gives me, and alone gives me, the presence of what is not me, of what is simply and fully. It does so because, like texture, it is the concretion of a universal visibility, of a unique space which separates and reunites, which sustains every cohesion (and even that of past and future, since there would be no such cohesion if they were not essentially relevant to the same space). Every visual something, as individual as it is, functions also as a dimension, because it gives itself as the result of a dehiscence of Being. What this ultimately means is that the proper essence of the visible is to have a layer of invisibility in the strict sense, which it makes present as a certain absence...There is that which reaches the eye directly, the frontal properties of the visible; but there is also that which reaches it from below—the profound postural latency where the body raises itself to see—and that which reaches vision from above like the phenomena of flight, of swimming, of movement, where it participates no longer in the heaviness of origins but in free accomplishments. Through it, then, the painter touches the two extremities. In the immemorial depth of the visible, something moved, caught fire, and engulfed his body; everything he paints is in answer to this incitement, and his hand is "nothing but the instrument of a distant will." Vision encounters, as at a crossroads, all the aspects of Being... There is no break at all in this circuit; it is impossible to say that nature ends here and that man or expression starts here. It is, therefore, mute Being which itself comes to show forth its own meaning. Herein lies the reason why the dilemma between figurative and nonfigurative art is badly posed; it is true and uncontradictory that no grape was ever what it is in the most figurative painting and that no painting, no matter how abstract, can get away from Being, that even Caravaggio's grape is the grape itself. This precession of what is upon what one sees and makes seen, of what one sees and makes seen upon what is—this is vision itself.

One incident from Yasuko’s days in the village elementary school was indelibly etched in her memory. She was the head of her class for two or three years in a row, including the time when it happened. Just before graduation the principal asked the pupils how many would go on to attend middle school. Of the twenty pupils from Sunada and Tsukigata only three were able to do so. Those three raised their hands. The other pupils—children of poor tenant farmers, small-time candy store owners, and barkeepers—turned around to look at them, their faces vivid with envy. With everyone’s eyes focused on them the three blushed a little but, as might be expected, they looked proud. Not only was each of the three inferior to Yasuko in grades, they—except for the assistant class leader—were from the bottom half of the class. At that moment Yasuko was assailed by a strange and incomprehensible feeling. She felt she could not bear to explain it away convincingly even within her own heart. Pupils who were much, much worse than she were going on to a higher school! She understood of course that it was because their families had “money,” but understanding alone was not enough to make Yasuko accept it. Similar things had happened a number of times. For instance, when a Hokkaido government director came to inspect their school it was really Yasuko who as head of the class should have delivered the congratulatory address. However, since she did not even have a different kimono to change into, a rich child took her place. The lack of clothes and money also led to her being absent from athletic meets and excursions. But at such times Yasuko, unlike Okei, assumed a scornful expression. She smiled faintly while listening to the rich child read the congratulatory address; and said that only those with nothing better to do wanted to take part in excursions and athletic meets. Unlike Yasuko, Okei often cried at such times, saying it was a terribly cruel and unfair way to treat fellow schoolmates.

For most parents the first is too stiff, but the second feels pretty normal. Well, that’s Toddler-ese! Amazingly, we instinctively automatically speak Toddler-ese when our kid does something to make us proud and happy! Too often, however, when she gets scared, mad, or sad, we suddenly become serious and stiff. Our voices get flat and ultracalm and we sound like emotional zombies, because we think that acting calm will calm our child. But this often backfires, because if we display no emotion when our child is really upset, she may feel misunderstood and alone just when she needs a friend.

You have been the recipient of generations of programming of a variety of lies. Spanning back 20 generations in your lineage, each parent’s parent totals over a million immediate ancestors for you alone. In approximately 500 years, you have a multitude of beliefs, energies, and DNA combining and influencing your existence from all these people in your lineage.

When a parent leaves their baby to cry on its own, aloneness and separation is imparted.

Listen to me, Sean—I want my daughter to be happy, but Rosie is the beat of my heart. When Franci told me she was having a baby and having her alone, the first thing I felt was resentment—I was barely fifty! I still feel I have a lot of life left to live! And I’d already raised a child alone, so I knew firsthand how hard it would be for her. Franci was going to need a lot from me, and I didn’t really have a lot to give. But I held that baby and, within seconds, I felt she was as much mine as my daughter’s. If you think for one second I’m going to be patient with you while you try to figure out if you have what it takes to be a good father, you’re wrong. Dead wrong.” Sean briefly wondered if in an earlier life he had pissed off a bunch of tough old goddesses; he was surrounded by strong, opinionated women. “I completely understand. I have a lot to learn about her. About Rosie.” “I don’t care what happens between you and Francine—she’s all grown up and can shoulder disappointment. But you’d better not let down my granddaughter, Sean.” “I know,” he said. “You’re going to have a lot of backup in that department. My mother’s on the job, beating me with the guilt stick every chance she gets, and no one does guilt like an Irish Catholic mother. Are you going to give me a chance?” “Yes,” she said, relaxing back in her chair. “Every chance. Don’t screw it up.” “I’m

Chloe pushes the elevator call button while Sandra covers the formal introductions. If Gabe thinks it’s weird that I was calling his name across the lobby when I’ve not technically been introduced to him, he doesn’t show it, likely because he’s a little distracted with Sandra. “So you came alone?” I ask as the four of us step onto the next elevator. Sandra and Chloe shoot me simultaneous looks of ire, clearly unimpressed with my segue from introductions to fact-finding. Gabe glances in my direction, then back at Sandra. “I did.” I nod to Chloe with a discreet tilt of my head and widen my eyes, as if to say, See, I was right. Chloe tilts her head back and shrugs. She knows I’m right, but it’ll kill her to admit it. I hope Gabe and Sandra have a big wedding so I can bring Chloe as my plus one. “See you later!” I call out as we all step off the elevator on the second floor, grabbing Chloe’s arm in the process. “I’m going to find Sawyer so I can introduce him to Chloe,” I explain, and then I make a run for it. I imagine it’s much the same way a mother feels when she drops her child at kindergarten for the first time. I stop the moment I find a hiding place so I can peek back and make sure Sandra’s stayed put where I left her, with Gabe. “He’s totally into her. You see it, right?” “Yeah, fine. He’s into her,” Chloe admits, begrudgingly. “They’re so cute they’re going to need a couple nickname. Sabra! Sabra’s perfect. Coined it!” I do a little raise-the-roof motion with my hands to celebrate my brilliance. “Sabra is a brand of hummus.” Oh. Maybe not so brilliant then. I drop my hands and frown.

Adam: Adam was a young man whose anxiety turned into a monster. Where Shelly had a very mild case of social anxiety, Adam’s case could only be called severe. Over a period of several years, his underlying social fears developed into a full-blown school phobia. A quiet, unassuming person, Adam had never stood out in the classroom. Through elementary school and on into high school, he neither excelled nor failed his subjects. By no means a discipline problem, the “shy” Adam kept to himself and seldom talked in class, whether to answer a teacher’s question or chat with his buddies. In fact, he really had no friends, and the only peers he socialized with were his cousins, whom he saw at weekly family gatherings. Though he watched the other kids working together on projects or playing sports together, Adam never approached them to join in. Maybe they wouldn’t let him, he thought. Maybe he wasn’t good enough. Being rejected was not a chance he was willing to take. Adam never tried hard in school either. If he didn’t understand something, he kept quiet, fearful that raising his hand would bring ridicule. When he did poorly on an exam or paper, it only confirmed to him what he was sure was true: He didn’t measure up. He became so apprehensive about his tests that he began to feel physically ill at the thought of each approaching reminder of his inadequacy. Even though he had studied hard for a math test, for example, he could barely bring himself to get out of bed on the morning it was to take place. His parents, who thought of their child as a reserved but obedient boy who would eventually grow out of this awkward adolescent stage, did not pressure him. Adam was defensive and withdrawn, overwrought by the looming possibility that he would fail. For the two class periods preceding the math test, Adam’s mind was awash with geometry theorems, and his stomach churning. As waves of nausea washed over him, he began to salivate and swallowed hard. His eyes burned and he closed them, wishing he could block the test from his mind. When his head started to feel heavy and he became short of breath, he asked for a hall pass and headed for the bathroom. Alone, he let his anxiety overtake him as he stared into the mirror, letting the cool water flow from the faucet and onto his sweaty palms. He would feel better, he thought, if he could just throw up. But even when he forced his finger down his throat, there was no relief. His dry heaves made him feel even weaker. He slumped to the cold tile and began to cry. Adam never went back to math class that day; instead, he got a pass from the nurse and went straight home. Of course, the pressure Adam was feeling was not just related to the math test. The roots of his anxiety went much deeper. Still, the physical symptoms of anxiety became so debilitating that he eventually quit going to school altogether. Naturally, his parents were extremely concerned but also uncertain what to do. It took almost a year before Adam was sufficiently in control of his symptoms to return to school.

Ever since I was a child, ever since I became wrongly convinced I had to be bigger and smarter than I really was, I’ve been trying to perform, trying to convince people I was more capable than I really was. I’d been sending that same nine-year-old kid who took the tape recorder apart out into the world to speak and perform and interact with people. She asked me to come back and sit in the adult chair and tell the nine-year-old what I thought about him. I didn’t know what to say. She asked me to imagine what he looked like, and I immediately pictured the chubby kid from the movie The Goonies. I smiled. I liked the kid. He was funny and disarming and yet still only nine years old. He seemed alone and afraid, and the only way he could get attention was to convince everybody around him he was smarter and stronger than he actually was. My therapist asked me, again, to say something to him. I looked at him for a while and he looked back, wide eyed and curious. I finally spoke up and said I liked him. I told him I thought he was funny and charming and smart. “Anything else?” my therapist said. “Yeah,” I said. “I also want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you out there in the world so you could impress people for us and fight for us and make money for us while I sat in here and read books.” The moment was powerful for me. I’d completely disassociated from the kid who had taken apart his tape recorder. I hardly knew him. I’d not raised him to maturity and he’d spent the last thirty years lonely and desperate for attention. It’s no wonder I hid from the world. It’s no wonder parties made me tired or I got exhausted after I spoke. It’s no wonder criticism made me angry or I overreacted to failure. I think the part of me I sent out to interact with the world was, in some ways, underdeveloped, still trying to be bigger and smarter as a measure of survival.

He had once told Loretta that he would be as nothing without his people, and that was true. He would be giving up all that he was to be with her. Yet how could he live without her? The prophecy had come to pass. Without her, he had no tomorrows. How could a man live without them? He sighed and closed his eyes. From the moment she had stepped out from her wooden walls, the path ahead of him had been clearly marked, but he had been too blind to see it. A tosi woman and a Comanche, their pasts stained with tears and bloodshed, had little hope of coexisting happily with either race. To be as one, they had to walk alone, away from both their people. Where, that was the question. And Hunter had no answers. West, as the prophecy foretold? Into the great mountain ranges? The thought frightened him. He had been raised in open spaces, able to see into tomorrow, with the north wind whispering, the grass waving, the buffalo plentiful. What would he hunt? And how? He wouldn’t know what roots and nuts to gather. He wouldn’t know which plants made good medicine, which bad. Did he dare take a woman into an unknown land, uncertain if he could feed her, care for her, or protect her? What if she came with child? Winter, the time when babies cried. How would he stand tall like a man if his family starved?

When you’re in the middle and stuck, you need to know when to back out and call for help. If that person is someone you live with, set up your signals as Molly and her husband did. Use expressions or words that clearly signify “I need your help now!” It is imperative that parents of spirited children work together. It is not a sign of failure to let others assist you. It is a recognition and acceptance of your own intensity and limits. Blaming or ridiculing only fuels the intensity levels. Teamwork is essential. You have to talk about how you react when your child is upset. You have to decide how you can help and support each other. By working together, you take the sting out of your child’s strong responses. You create a lifeline that keeps you from falling into the abyss of the red zone. If it seems impossible for you and your partner to work together, seek counseling, and make weekly dates a priority so that you can work together. Researchers at the Gottman Institute have found that children of unhappily married parents are chronically aroused physiologically and it takes them much longer to recover from emotional arousal. Your children need you to work together so that they can stay in the green zone, where they are calm and open to your guidance. If you are a single parent, you might think that you can’t ask someone else for help. Single parents often say, “What if I call and interrupt their meal or family time?” Or, “I don’t want to bother anyone.” But good friends don’t mind being bothered. They appreciate the opportunity to help and the joy of giving. Look for someone you know who likes your child and won’t be critical of him or you. You have to be able to trust that they’ll support you, and then feel free to call. As the parent of a spirited child, you have to know and use your resources well. Step Away from It Of course there are times when your kids are plummeting into the red zone and you are all alone, with no one to help. If you realize you’re going over the edge with them, give yourself permission to step out of the fire. It’s much better to take a breather than to have two bulls charging head to head into each other.

She placed the soapy cloth on his shoulder, briskly stroking over smooth skin, trying not to notice how firm the muscles beneath her fingers were. She kept her gaze strictly on her hand. Still, it was impossible to ignore the elegant sweep of his collarbone, the bulge of his upper arm, the way a single vein ran along the inside of his forearm... She realized that her hand had slowed along his arm. The room was very quiet. Nicoletta had left with the dirty water and Ubertino was somewhere, perhaps fetching more clean water. She and the duke were alone in the bedroom with her hands on his body. She daren't raise her eyes to his. She took his hand in hers and ran the cloth over the veins that roped the back. His fingers were long and strong, and they dwarfed hers, the nails square and pale. She carefully washed each one and then cupped his hand in hers to wash his palm. It was an intimate act. A... caring act. One a mother might perform for a child. Or a woman might perform for her lover. Iris caught her breath and straightened to rinse the cloth. When she turned back her gaze caught his. He was watching her, his crystal eyes half-lidded, his twisted lips parted.

What if you got a divorce and lived alone with your daughter?” I asked. Rie eyed me momentarily before returning to her fingers. “No way. How could I afford to pay rent? Go back to working part-time at a bookstore?” “It would be tough, but you should really think about it.” “It’s literally impossible.” Rie looked at me. “Things were hard enough when both of us were working. There’s no way I could do it on my own, no way.” “It’d be really hard, but you could get help. Child support and all that. Plenty of people—” “Those people have jobs,” she interrupted. “Real jobs. If you have a career, you have some degree of security. But you need to have a jobs, or family money, or someplace you can always run back home to. I’ve got none of that. I don’t have any qualifications or skills . . . I quit my job. And good riddance. Working that hard for 1000 yen an hour. They’d rather give those shifts to some eighteen-year-old kid anyway. There’s nothing out there for a good-for-nothing single mother, going on forty, with no real work experience. You can’t raise a child like that. It isn’t possible.

West was struck by how natural and affectionate their interaction was. Clearly this was not the usual upper-class arrangement in which a child was raised by the servants and seldom seen or heard by his mother. Phoebe’s sons meant everything to her. Any candidate for her next husband would have to be ideal father material: wholesome, respectable, and wise. God knew that left him out of the running. That life—of being Phoebe’s husband, father to her children—was ready-made for someone else. A man who deserved the right to live with her in intimacy and watch her nightly feminine rituals of bathing, slipping on a nightgown, brushing out her hair. He alone would take her to bed, make love to her, and hold her while she slept. Someone out there was destined for all of that. Whoever he was, West hated the bastard.

Society readily accepts that a father can’t be expected to raise a child alone, without help; yet a mother is completely different. For a mother to claim she couldn’t do it, well, that’s unacceptable.

Millions have believed this—that prayers are answered—and these millions have prayed to different gods. Were they all wrong or all right? Would a tentative prayer be listened to? Admitting that the Bibles, and Korans, and Vedas, are misleading and unreliable, may there not be an unseen, unknown Being, who knows my heart—who is watching me now? If so, this Being gave me my reason, which[38] doubts Him, and on Him is the responsibility. And would this being, if he exists, overlook a defect for which I am not to blame, and listen to a prayer from me, based on the mere chance that I might be mistaken? Can an unbeliever, in the full strength of his reasoning powers, come to such trouble that he can no longer stand alone, but must cry for help to an imagined power? Can such time come to a sane man—to me?" He looked at the dark line of vacant horizon. It was seven miles away; New York was nine hundred; the moon in the east over two hundred thousand, and the stars above, any number of billions. He was alone, with a sleeping child, a dead bear, and the Unknown. He walked softly to the boat and looked at the little one for a moment; then, raising his head, he whispered: "For you, Myra.

Your child will need lots of opportunities to exercise his imagination and creativity as he grows. (Sometimes that includes time to play alone.)

Do you really think that our parents will allow you to live alone with a bastard child? They may have raised you like their own, but they have limits, especially when it comes to the good name of the family and the business.

Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it, someone’s going to be criticizing you. You went to too great lengths trying to conceive. You didn’t go to great enough lengths. You had the baby too young. You should have kept the baby even though you were young. You shouldn’t have waited so long to try to have a baby. You’re a too involved mother. You’re not involved enough because you let your child play on the playground alone. It never ends. It strikes me that while all this judgment goes on, the options available to women become fewer and fewer. I’m not even (just) talking about the right to choose—across the U.S., women have less access to birth control, health care, reproductive education, and post-partum support. So we give women less information about their bodies and reproduction, less control over their bodies, and less support during and after pregnancy—and then we criticize them fiercely for whatever they end up doing. This seems not only unfair to me but a recipe for societal disaster. I don’t have answers here, but I wanted to raise questions about what we expect of mothers and who we think “deserves” to be a mother and who doesn’t—and why we think that question is ours to decide.

If your child is going to be a high performer, he needs control over his athletic experience. The sport must be his choice, his performance must be based upon his efforts and motivation, and his development must be a result of his failures and successes. As a result, the outcome of his achievement belongs to him and him alone.

Well, whatever did those old brutes think about evil, then?" "It's hard to say exactly. they seemed to be obsessed with locating it somewhere. I mean, an evil spring in the mountains, an evil smoke, evil blood in the veins going from parent to child. They were sort of like the early explorers of Oz, except the maps they made were of invisible stuff, pretty inconsistent one with the other." "And where is evil located?" Galinda asked, flopping onto her bed and closing her eyes. "Well, they didn't agree, did they? Or else what would they have to write sermons arguing about? Some said the original evil was the vacuum caused by the Fairy Queen Lurline leaving us alone here. When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiples. So every evil is a sign of the absence of deity." "Well I wouldn't know an evil thing if it fell on me," said Galinda. "The early unionists, who were a lot more Lurlinist than unionists are today, argued that some invisible pocket of corruption was floating around the neighborhood, a direct descendent of the pain the world felt with Lurline left. Like a patch of cold air on a warm still night. A perfectly agreeable soul might march through it and become infected, and then go and kill a neighbor. But then was it your fault if you walked through a patch of badness? If you couldn't see it? There wasn't ever any council of unionists that decided it one way or the other, and nowadays so many people don't even believe in Lurline." "But they believe in evil still," said Galinda with a yawn. "Isn't that funny, that deity is passe but the attributes and implications of deity linger -" "You are thinking!" Elphaba cried. Galinda raised herself to her elbows at the enthusiasm in her roomie's voice. "I am about to sleep, because this is profoundly boring to me," Galinda said, but Elphaba was grinning from ear to ear.

Child care is one of the most difficult problems for a woman to have to face alone. Not only is she tormented with having to leave the raising of her children to someone else, but she wants the best of care for them. For the amount of money that she may be able to pay from her meager wages, it is likely that she will be lucky to find anyone at all to take care of the children.

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

There are now more than 2,000 billionaires living in 20 countries from the United States, China and Russia to Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia.93 An annual wealth tax levied at just 1.5 percent of their net worth would raise $74 billion each year: that alone would be enough to fill the funding gap to get every child into school and deliver essential health services in all low-income countries.

There are now more than 2,000 billionaires living in 20 countries from the United States, China and Russia to Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia.93 An annual wealth tax levied at just 1.5 percent of their net worth would raise $74 billion each year: that alone would be enough to fill the funding gap to get every child into school and deliver essential health services in all low-income countries.94 Match that with a global corporate tax system that treats multinational corporations as single, unified firms and closes tax loopholes and tax havens, so boosting public revenue for public purposes worldwide.95

AGES 10 TO 13: GAINING INDEPENDENCE. Ten is about the age when your child can begin to perform many skills independently. He should know how to: • stay home alone • go to the store and make purchases by himself • change his own bedsheets • use the washing machine and dryer • plan and prepare a meal with several ingredients • use the oven to broil or bake foods • read labels • iron his clothes • learn to use basic hand tools • mow the lawn • look after younger siblings or neighbors

The Son of a vacuum Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention. -He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid. The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries. Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq. Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup. Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003. As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart. -When will you come back, dad? -On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts. The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland. Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote: Every morning takes me nostalgic for you, to the jasmine flower, oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while, To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love, night shakes me with tears in my eyes, my longing for you has shaped me into dreams, stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam, calling out for me, you scream, waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face, a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace, Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace, for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze. -Where is Ruslan? On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother, -with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father. A moment of silence fell over the children, -Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery? -Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.

It was crazy, the prisons that people made in their minds. Suzi was an educated middle-class woman, with a living, affluent mother, who perhaps was not the most supportive, but would hardly turn her daughter out on to the street. The law was there to protect her, make sure she wouldn’t get kicked out of the marriage with nothing. So what was she so scared of? The loss of social standing, the failure of a divorce, perhaps the loneliness, raising her child alone? I wished I could tell her how insignificant these things were, compared to what other pain life had up its sleeve.

Because I think that it finally dawned on me that I have a child who will never know her grandmother, the person who was the closest to me in the world. And I was about to start this journey with my daughter by myself without the help of my mother. I was going to raise her alone, and I was terrified.

...But I am the most horrified at the slim young man who is upon his knees, clad in the same white trousers as I, his long, black hair framing his face like soft, shining curtains as he rests his head on his clasped, shackled hands and prays. "Brian," I sob, my anguish causing my voice to break. "I don't want you in this place..." He raises his head and pulls me down beside him. His sightless eyes seem to look straight into mine. "You aren't alone anymore, Obadiah," he says gently. I weep, and take him back against me the best that I can, with my shackled wrists, and we rest against one another...two vessels ready for the last journey. "I couldn't let you go without me, 'Baddy," he says softly. "I'd never find a love like yours again, even if I lived for a million years! There is only one you. When a person is gifted with a love like this, it should be defended at all costs..." I weep then, for real...for this precious child, who will pay the ultimate price for loving me...how he must love me, indeed...

I got this life, n I feel breathing Bcoz of u...... I left alone in d side of darkness N melted like a snow ball in d raising sun shine.. I had no past of u , N I had no memories of u But I still have a affection towards u.. U r not with me when d tym I need u badly N I feel empty when u r not beside me But I still feel to rely on u.... U didn't fullfiled all d dreams of mom N she may hates u... Every sec for leaving alone N she might have lost all her hopes bcoz of u But I promise I will fulfill all her dreams I have seen many fathers who gives support N cares like a hero of their child But I feel good if u become a shadow of mine To support me all d tym.....I need u Every 1 may hate u , N speak wrong abt u May b mom don't want u now... But ur son needs u badly N want to linger beside u U might have hold my hand U might have smooched me U might have hugged me U might have cared abt mek N i feel nothing abt it...N I don't hav a memory abt u But I still imagine every sec that U loved me... U care abt me... Just bcoz.......u r my FATHER uff, U r truly a wonderful part in my life .............................. < I miss u DAD >...............................

Nigeria is not alone, either in the prevalence of child marriage or in attempts to end the practice. In September 2008, Moroccan officials closed sixty Koranic schools operated by Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui, because he issued a decree justifying marriage to girls as young as nine. “The sheikh,” according to Agence France-Presse, “said his decree was based on the fact that the Prophet Mohammed consummated his marriage to his favourite wife when she was that age.”23 It should come as no surprise, then, given the words of the Koran about divorcing prepubescent women and Muhammad’s example in marrying Aisha, that in some areas of the Islamic world the practice of child marriage enjoys the blessing of the law. Time magazine reported in 2001 that “in Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys,” and notes that “the law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move.”24 Likewise, the New York Times reported in 2008 that in Yemen, “despite a rising tide of outrage, the fight against the practice is not easy. Hard-line Islamic conservatives, whose influence has grown enormously in the past two decades, defend it, pointing to the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a 9-year-old.”25 (The characterization of proponents of Islamic law as “conservatives” is notable—the Times doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that “conservatives” in the U.S. are not typically advocates of child marriage.) And so child marriage remains prevalent in many areas of the Islamic world. In 2007, photographer Stephanie Sinclair won the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition for a wedding photograph of an Afghani couple: the groom was said to be forty years old but looked older; the bride was eleven. UNICEF Patroness Eva Luise Köhler explained, “The UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007 raises awareness about a worldwide problem. Millions of girls are married while they are still under age. Most of theses child brides are forever denied a self-determined life.”26 According to UNICEF, about half the women in Afghanistan are married before they reach the age of eighteen.27

They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams—and still calls for more. They are fools who think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No Parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for the doing of these things was itself the doing of them. To wield oneself—to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand—and so to make or break that which no one else can build or nun—that is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt the sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy—to these both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods.

Would you rather set up our child for war from the instant it’s born? If the serpiente reject our child for their throne, then you still have Salem as your heir. If my people reject it, there will be no Tuuli Thea after me.” I stepped back from her, horror seeping into my blood. My gaze flickered to the others in the room. Ailbhe’s pale blue eyes would not meet mine. Rei’s did, but then he looked away. Valene was watching Danica, her expression unreadable. My mate was the only one who would meet my gaze, her golden eyes pained. “Out,” I said, speaking to our audience. They looked at one another, hesitating. Valene first deferred, followed by Rei. Ailbhe lingered a moment longer, and I was not sure whether he did from guilt or compassion. Then we were alone, and I took Danica’s hands. “Danica, do you know what you are asking of me? Giving up my child to the Keep, to be raised by strangers, to sleep in lonely silence, to be taught to be ashamed of what she feels and what she is…and to be betrothed before she can even speak, before she can possibly understand love.” Danica closed her eyes for a moment, taking a breath. “I will never have a mate but you. I love you. And yes, I will have an heir. But you are talking about taking away my child.” “What else can we do?” she returned. “Zane, I was raised in the Keep; it is not as horrible as you think. And you would still see her--” She broke off, because she knew as well as I that the heir to the Tuuli Thea saw her parents only in formal situations. She shook her head. “Please…Zane, is there another way? Anything else that will keep our firstborn child from coming into the world only to see her land ripped apart by war?” Silence. “It will be months before the child is born,” I whispered, pleading not only with Danica, but with whatever powers might be. “We don’t have to make this decision, not yet.” Danica nodded, but still she said, “One queen cannot rule two worlds, even if she is of both.

In the scullery kitchens and probably the salt mines of this world, many a child is not so much raised as hammered into shape, Artie. To be of use. Surviving by the grace of utility alone.

Like Gil, Brian had been raised as an only child by strong women. "It shaped our views of ourselves. We considered ourselves loners, on the outside of society," said Jackson. And the two of them often preferred being alone to being around other people.

Our young are so dependent that no parent is capable of the task of supporting and caring for that infant—not just the attention and protection, but the teaching and feeding. Hunters and gatherers must meet the energy demands of lactating mothers back in camp. Mothers simply cannot raise infants alone, and this dictates social bonding. The basic social contract has babies as its bottom line. Without this, the human species cannot go on as it is. All evolution hinges on successful reproduction of the next generation. In the case of humans, this is an enormous task. Through all human time, across all human cultures, there emerges a number associated with this task. It takes a ratio of four adults to one child to allow humans to go on. This is the real cost of our big brains. This is why we must cooperate, and why tools like empathy and language evolved to enable that cooperation. All else of human nature is derivative of this single human condition.

One reason why fundamentalists have such high ACR scores may be due to church doctrine. Many of the fundamentalist theologians who espouse supernatural interpretations of scripture are often the same ones who advocate strict child-rearing practices.20 For example, Rev. James Dobson’s best-selling book, Dare to Discipline, explicitly links its fundamentalist beliefs to having obedient and well-mannered children. And upon reflection, this connection between strict child rearing and fundamentalism is not at all surprising. Many fundamentalist sects demand submission and obedience to the strict will of God. It’s no surprise, then, that obedience and respect are regarded as desirable traits among people who see them as pathways to salvation. That noted, it’s also important to recognize that not all authoritarians are fundamentalists. Indeed, 45 percent of strong authoritarians do not hold fundamentalist beliefs. And some of this difference may have to do with another factor emphasized by the original authors of The Authoritarian Personality: childhood experience. By their account, being raised in an overly harsh or punitive social environment contributes to authoritarianism. These same factors might also contribute to magical thinking. Our research suggests that this is plausible. In our surveys, we asked respondents to describe their childhood in very general terms. Did they grow up in a •  very strict house where all rules had to be followed (31 percent); •  moderate house where only some rules were strictly enforced (59 percent); •  relaxed house where my parents largely let me alone (10 percent). Not surprisingly, these items are correlated with ACR scores. Authoritarians are far more likely to report being raised in strict homes; for example, 42 percent of people raised in strict homes are strong authoritarians, compared with only 23 percent of people from relaxed homes. More important, however, is that the type of home you were raised in is also a big predictor of your Intuitionism score. People from strict homes score four points higher on our Intuitionism scale than people from either moderate or relaxed homes, even when we take their ACR scores into account.

If scientists were to discover a new, hitherto unknown animal, and wanted to find out quickly how it rears its young (without weeks of observation), a simple experiment would be to take their mother away from them. If they remained quiet then it would be normal for the young of that species to be left alone. If, on the other hand, they began to scream at the top of their lungs, then it would be normal for them to be with their mother at all times. And how does your child react when you leave her alone? What do you think is normal for our species?

June recalls as a child being raised in a loveless home: “I remember climbing up on the stool in the morning to get the cereal down from the cupboard. And when I took a bath, I took it alone. I didn’t have rubber duckies or anything like that to play with. My grandmother would leave me and come back thirty minutes later to see me shivering in the cold water.

she often dreamed of holding a baby, of raising a child. She knew those dreams were signs from the interior that she longed to be a mother. But the problem was, she loved CeCe. How could any love match what she had for her niece? She had even talked about it with Maddie, because her sister was always worried about her, sad that she was so alone. “Being an aunt is enough for me,” Hadley had said. “It’s not the same,” Maddie had said. “Maybe not, but I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I do CeCe.” “Well, and she loves you, too.” That much? Hadley had wondered. Did CeCe know that Hadley’s world revolved around her and Maddie? That Hadley would do anything for them?

The truth was that Doreen and Patrice didn't expect much from Malik, not because of anything he had done, but because of their own experiences with men. Patrice's and Natasha's fathers had left Doreen; Ruby and C.J.'s daddy was in prison. The fathers of Patrice's children played a negligible role in their lives... Doreen and Patrice did not see why a man needed to be involved in family decisions about where to raise a child, let alone what to name it. Said Doreen to Natasha, "There was no one around to rub my stomach when you were kicking me." Said Patrice, "We didn't have a daddy. My kids don't have no daddy. And your kids don't need no daddy.

We had a one-night stand. I got pregnant, tried to contact him. He tried to contact me. We lost contact for five years. I thought he’d abandoned me, I hated him. But he didn’t even know he had a child because I raised Arthur, that’s our son, by myself, until he showed up at one of my work events and wouldn’t leave me alone until . . .” She wiggles her ring finger and clicks her tongue. “Now we’re finally back on track and getting our happy ending.

Our work brings us into people's lives when they are most desperate, alone, sad, afraid, and wounded, but for the most part the stories you'll read here are success stories—stories of hope, survival, triumph. Surprisingly, it is often when wandering through the emotional carnage left by the worst of humankind that we find the best of humanity as well.

I had learned the power of first impressions, as well. I could get a much better sense of a child’s prognosis if he had a favorable or at least a neutral first impression of me. So rather than just start asking questions of an unsuspecting and usually frightened and disoriented child, I’d found it was best to give him a chance to meet me first. We’d have a brief humorous or engaging conversation, I’d let him size me up a little, provide a clear, simple explanation of what I wanted to learn from him, and then leave him alone for a while to process that information. I’d assure him that he was in control. The child didn’t have to say anything if he didn’t want to: if any topic came up that he didn’t wish to share with me, I’d tell him to just let me know and I would change the subject. Any time he decided to stop, the conversation was over.

The daily recitation of Divine Office is a great joy to me in spite of my unworthiness, but apart from this, I have not the courage to make myself search for wonderful prayers in books; there are so many of them, and it gives me a headache. In any case, each one seems more beautiful than the one before. As I cannot say all of them, and do not know which to choose, I just act like a child who can’t read; I tell God, quite simply, all that I want to say, and He always understands. Prayer, for me, is simply a raising of the heart, a simple glance toward Heaven, an expression of love and gratitude in the midst of trial, as well as in times of joy; in a word, it is something noble and supernatural expanding my soul and uniting it with God. Whenever my soul is so dry that I am incapable of a single good thought, I always say an Our Father or a Hail Mary very slowly, and these prayers alone cheer me up and nourish my soul with divine food.