Turns One Birthday Quotes

Abby touched her palm to my cheek. "You know what, Mr. Maddox?" "What, baby?" Her expression turned serious. "In another life, I could love you." I watched her for a moment, staring into her glassed over eyes. She was drunk, but just for a moment it didn't seem wrong to pretend that she meant it. "I might love you in this one.

When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back; Three from the circle, three from the track; Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone; Five will return and one go alone. Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long; Wood from the burning; stone out of song; Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw; Six signs the circle and the grail gone before. Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old. Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea. All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree.

I wished for Conrad on every birthday, every shooting star, every lost eyelash, every penny in a fountain was dedicated to the one I loved.

I knew you were out there somewhere,” I tell her, quirking a sad smile. “The girlfriends, women I dated, Cole’s mother…. I never wanted to marry anyone, because they weren’t what I was looking for. I had started to think I had my sights set too high, and you didn’t exist.” I clasp the back of her neck and run my thumbs down her throat. “Turns out my dream girl belongs to the one person it would kill me to hurt.

Turns out my dream girl belongs to the one person it would kill me to hurt.

Ego Tripping I was born in the congo I walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinx I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light I am bad I sat on the throne drinking nectar with allah I got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirst My oldest daughter is nefertiti the tears from my birth pains created the nile I am a beautiful woman I gazed on the forest and burned out the sahara desert with a packet of goat's meat and a change of clothes I crossed it in two hours I am a gazelle so swift so swift you can't catch me For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son hannibal an elephant He gave me rome for mother's day My strength flows ever on My son noah built new/ark and I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day I turned myself into myself and was jesus men intone my loving name All praises All praises I am the one who would save I sowed diamonds in my back yard My bowels deliver uranium the filings from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels On a trip north I caught a cold and blew My nose giving oil to the arab world I am so hip even my errors are correct I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission I mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky...

Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake.

Damn right! The time of your life! Gotta wrap up all those life events, all those parties, into one - birthdays, wedding, funeral." THen he turns to their father. "Very efficient, right, Dad?".... "Here's to my brother, Lev," Marcus says. "And to our parents! Who have always done the right thing. The appropriate thing. Who have always given generously to charity. Who have always given 10 percent of everything to our church. Hey, Mom - we're lucky you had ten kids instead of five, otherwise we'd end up having to cut Lev off at the waist!

My niece just turned one. I gave her a birthday card that read, "If you can read this, Happy Birthday!

Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword. A pebble could be a diamond. A tree was a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was the Queen and he was the King. In the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls. When the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair. Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. When they were ten he asked her to marry him. When they were eleven he kissed her for the first time. When they were thirteen they got into a fight and for three weeks they didn't talk. When they were fifteen she showed him the scar on her left breast. Their love was a secret they told no one. He promised her he would never love another girl as long as he lived. "What if I die?" she asked. "Even then," he said. For her sixteenth birthday, he gave her an English dictionary and together they learned the words. "What's this?" he'd ask, tracing his index finger around her ankle and she'd look it up. "And this?" he'd ask, kissing her elbow. "Elbow! What kind of word is that?" and then he'd lick it, making her giggle. "What about this," he asked, touching the soft skin behind her ear. "I don't know," she said, turning off the flashlight and rolling over, with a sigh, onto her back. When they were seventeen they made love for the first time, on a bed of straw in a shed. Later-when things happened that they could never have imagined-she wrote him a letter that said: When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?

Please don’t hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Loving you made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would have otherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy. Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter and hopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made me deluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you’re always going to haunt me. I’ll never be able to have another birthday without wondering how you’re celebrating yours. I’ll never be able to think another guy is more handsome, talented, intelligent, or worth loving than you, despite all your faults (and there are many). I’ll never be able to check my e-mail without praying I’ll find a message from you with the subject line I love you, Dom—please come back to me. Meanwhile, every corner of this city is laced with memories of us together, and I’ll never be able to leave the house without hoping and dreading that I’ll run into you. You stole Fort Myers from me, and I lived here first, you fucking thief. You actually may be one of my last thoughts when I die.

Thanks for staying with me last night,” I said, stroking Toto’s soft fur. “You didn’t have to sleep on the bathroom floor.” “Last night was one of the best nights of my life.” I turned to see his expression. When I saw that he was serious, I shot him a dubious look. “Sleeping in between the toilet and the tub on a cold, hard tile floor with a vomiting idiot was one of your best nights? That’s sad, Trav.” “No, sitting up with you when you’re sick, and you falling asleep in my lap was one of my best nights. It wasn’t comfortable, I didn’t sleep worth a shit, but I brought in your nineteenth birthday with you, and you’re actually pretty sweet when you’re drunk.” “I’m sure between the heaving and purging I was very charming.” He pulled me close, patting Toto who was snuggled up to my neck. “You’re the only woman I know that still looks incredible with your head in the toilet. That’s saying something.

My family suffered. My hair turned up in every corner, every drawer, every meal. Even in the rice puddings Tessie made, covering each little bowl with wax paper before putting it away in the fridge--even into these prophylactically secure desserts my hair found its way! Jet black hairs wound themselves around bars of soap. They lay pressed like flower stems between the pages of books. They turned up in eyeglass cases, birthday cards, once--I swear--inside an egg Tessie had just cracked. The next-door neighbor's cat coughed up a hairball one day and the hair was not the cat's.

Now, bitterly, with one sweep of the front door, the compassion was spent. To the degree that Lawrence's face was familiar, it was killingly so - as if she had been gradually getting to know him for over nine years and then, bang, he was known. She'd been handed her diploma. There were no more surprises - or only this last surprise, that there were no more surprises. To torture herself, Irina kept looking, and looking, at Lawrence's face, like turning the key in an ignition several times before resigning herself that the battery was dead.

To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that SEEMS to be done right--though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now--and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents--' Certainly,' said Alice. And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!' I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't--till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"' But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected. When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.' The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.' The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master--that's all.

Didn't you just turn eighteen, Jen?" Vasile asked her. Jen looked a little confused at his choice of response. "Umm, yes. I believe that loud racket you heard a couple of weeks ago was Sally and Jacque's idea of a birthday party. What does that have to do with me leaving?" "If you are eighteen, Jen, you are an adult. I can't make you stay here. If you want to leave, if you really think that is the best thing for you, then you can go. I will allow you to use the pack plane to get back to the U.S. if that is truly what you want," Vasile explained. Jen cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowed at the Alpha sitting calmly in front of her. "Just like that? No trying to convince me to stay, or telling me not to give up, or yada yada yada bull crap?" "No 'yada yada yada bull crap'," he agreed. "Huh, okay then.

[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue.

Perhaps the most important moments of all turn out to be the ones we walk through without thinking, the ones we mark down as just another day. Just another day we have to get through before something more interesting comes along. We benchmark our lives with birthdays and Christmases and holidays, but perhaps we should think more about the ordinary days. The days which pass by and we don’t even notice. Elsie once said that you can’t tell how big a moment is until you turn back and look at it, and I think, perhaps, that she was right.

MOTHER – By Ted Kooser Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume. You have been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one nightlong watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. The meadowlarks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold. Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year, honking in over the trees and splashing down. They never nest, but stay a week or two then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts, burning in circles like birthday candles, for this is the month of my birth, as you know, the best month to be born in, thanks to you, everything ready to burst with living. There will be no more new flannel nightshirts sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand. You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever.

it’s a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can’t function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don’t care as you can’t hear what they’re saying anyway, and it doesn’t matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don’t seem to matter anymore and things you didn’t think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don’t want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It’s a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven. even your body goes out of control, you can’t eat, you don’t sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything’s just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don’t seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down under your love blanket for more, knowing it’s uncomfortable but compulsory. and then, once you think you’ve got him, the panic sets in. what if he goes off me? what if I blow it, say the wrong thing? what if he meets someone better than me? Prettier, thinner, funnier, more like him? who doesn’t bite there nails? perhaps he doesn’t feel the same, maybe this is all in my head and this is just a quick fling for him. why did I tell him that stupid story about not owning up that I knew who spilt the ink on the teachers bag and so everyone was punished for it? does he think I'm a liar? what if I'm not very good at that blow job thing and he’s just being patient with me? he says he loves me; yes, well, we can all say words, can’t we? perhaps he’s just being polite. of course you do your best to keep all this to yourself, you don’t want him to think you're a neurotic nutcase, but now when he’s away doing Real Life it’s agony, your mind won’t leave you alone, it tortures you and examines your every moment spent together, pointing out how stupid you’ve been to allow yourself to get this carried away, how insane you are to imagine someone would feel like that about you. dad did his best to reassure me, but nothing he said made a difference - it was like I wanted to see Simon, but didn’t want him to see me.

For a very long time I worked and worked and worked, and then I looked up one day and all my friends were married with children. These married-with-children people were still my friends, but they'd become part of a community I wasn't in, a club I didn't belong to. Socially, their lives had completely changed, and they were busy. Their attention had turned to carpools and birthday parties and school tuition, and I was playing catch-up:"Wait, so we don't have game night anymore? You guys, who's free for dinner Saturday? Oh, absolutely no one?

On my birthday, every year since I turned eighteen, she called me at twelve twenty in the morning to wish me happy birthday and tell me how much joy I brought her. She’d told me she was sorry she couldn’t do it when I turned thirty, and handed me a box filled with little bits of paper. She’d written Happy Birthday to my baby boy on every one. There must have been fifty of them.

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

My father then said, ‘Mike, I’ve told you how dinosaurs went extinct. An asteroid crashed into the Earth. The world first became a sea of fire, and then sank into a prolonged period of darkness and coldness.… One night, you woke from a nightmare, saying that you had dreamt that you were back in that terrifying age. Let me tell you now what I wanted to tell you that night: If you really lived during the Cretaceous Period, you’d be fortunate. The period we live in now is far more frightening. Right now, species on Earth are going extinct far faster than during the late Cretaceous. Now is truly the age of mass extinctions! So, my child, what you’re seeing is nothing. This is only an insignificant episode in a much vaster process. We can have no sea birds, but we can’t be without oil. Can you imagine life without oil? Your last birthday, I gave you that lovely Ferrari and promised you that you could drive it after you turned fifteen. But without oil, it would be a pile of junk metal and you’d never drive it. Right now, if you want to visit your grandfather, you can get there on my personal jet and cross the ocean in a dozen hours or so. But without oil, you’d have to tumble in a sailboat for more than a month.… These are the rules of the game of civilization: The first priority is to guarantee the existence of the human race and their comfortable life. Everything else is secondary.

Far from being amicable, the numbers seem to turn their backs on each other, and I couldn't find a pair with even the most tenuous connection, let alone this wonderfully intimate one. The Professor was right. My birthday and his watch had overcome great trials and tribulations to meet each other in the vast sea of numbers.

The thing no one tells you, the thing you have to find out on your own through firsthand experience, is that there is never an easy way to talk about suicide. There never was, there will never be. If ever someone asked, I'd tell them the truth: that my aunt was amazing, that she lived widely, that she had the most infectious laugh, that she knew four different languages and had a passport cluttered with so many stamps from different countries that it'd make any world traveler green with envy, and that she had a monster over her shoulder she didn't let anyone else see. And in turn, that monster didn't let her see all the things she would miss. The birthdays. The anniversaries. The sunsets. The bodega on the corner that had turned into that shiplap furniture store. The monster closed her eyes to all the pain she would give the people she left—the terrible weight of missing her and trying not to blame her in all the same breath. And then you started blaming yourself. Could you have done something, been that voice that finally broke through? If you loved them more, if you paid more attention, if you were better, if you only asked, if you even knew to ask, if you could just read between the lines and— If, if, if. There is no easy way to talk about suicide. Sometimes the people you love don't leave you with goodbyes—they just leave.

When the book was published, I had just turned sixty-one. I am writing this at a moment when, according to my doctors, I cannot be certain of celebrating another birthday.

The next morning I told Mom I couldn't go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same thing that’s always wrong.” “You’re sick?” “I'm sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything.” She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. “What's everything?” I started counting on my fingers: “The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry–” “Who's Larry?” “The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says ‘I promise it’s for food’ after he asks for money.” She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. “How you don’t know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no ‘raison d’etre’, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it’s cheaper…” That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn't leave while I was still going. “…domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they’re embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there’s nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity in school, Grandma’s coupons, storage facilities, people who don’t know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won’t be humans in fifty years–” “Who said there won't be humans in fifty years?” I asked her, “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” She looked at her watch and said, “I'm optimistic.” “Then I have some bed news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.” “Why do beautiful songs make you sad?” “Because they aren't true.” “Never?” “Nothing is beautiful and true.

The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

One of the study’s major findings was that in the successful relationships, positive attention outweighed negative on a daily basis by a factor of five to one. This positive attention wasn’t about dramatic actions like throwing over-the-top birthday parties or purchasing a dream home. It took the form of small gestures, such as: using a pleased tone of voice when receiving a phone call from the partner, as opposed to an exasperated tone or a rushed pace that implied the partner’s call was interrupting important tasks inquiring about dentist appointments or other details of the other person’s day putting down the remote control, newspaper, or telephone when the other partner walked through the door arriving home at the promised time—or at least calling if there was a delay These small moments turned out to be more predictive of a loving, trusting relationship than were the more innovative steps of romantic vacations and expensive presents. Possibly, that’s because small moments provide consistent tending and nurturing.

He may not dig through a mountain for you, but he will do other things. Little things like remembering your birthday, bringing you gifts for no reason, making sure you get the bigger half of a sandwich. It’s the little things that turn into big things, anyway. That can change someone absolutely ordinary into someone who you can one day love back.

Liza Hempstock, who had been Bod's friend for the last six years, was different in another way; she was less likely to be there for him when Bod went down to the nettle patch to see her, and on the rare occasions when she was, she would be short-tempered, argumentative and often downright rude. Bod talked to Mr Owens about this, and after a few moments' reflection, his father said, "It's just women, I reckon. She liked you as a boy, probably isn't sure who you are now you're a young man. I used to play with one little girl down by the duck pond every day until she turned about your age, and then she threw an apple at my head and did not say another word to me until I was seventeen." Mrs Owens stiffened. "It was a pear I threw," she said, tartly, "and I was talking to you again soon enough, for we danced a measure at your cousin Ned's wedding, and that was but two days after your sixteenth birthday." Mr Owens said, "Of course you are right, my dear." He winked at Bod, to tell him that it was none of it serious. And then mouthed "Seventeen" to show that, really, it was.

She was looking at him steadily; he however, found it difficult to look back at her; it was like gazing into a brilliant light. Nice view, he said feebly, pointing toward with window. She ignored this. He could not blame her. I couldn't think what to get you, she said. You didn't have to get me anything. She disregarded this too. I didn't know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you. He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up. She took a step closer to him. So then I thought, I'd like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some Veela when you're off doing whatever you're doing. I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest. There's the silver lining I've been looking for, she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion better than firewhiskey; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair- The door banged open behind them and they jumped apart. Oh, said Ron pointedly. Sorry. Ron! Hermione was just behind him, slight out of breath. There was a strained silence, then Ginny had said in a flat little voice, Well, happy birthday anyway, Harry. Ron's ears were scarlet; Hermione looked nervous. Harry wanted to slam the door in their faces, but it felt as though a cold draft had entered the room when the door opened, and his shining moment had popped like a soap bubble. All the reasons for ending his relationship with Ginny, for staying well away from her, seemed to have slunk inside the room with Ron, and all happy forgetfulness was gone. He looked at Ginny, wanting to say something, though he hardly knew what, but she had turned her back on him. He thought that she might have succumbed, for once, to tears. He could not do anything to comfort her in front of Ron. I'll see you later, he said, and followed the other two out of the bedroom.

Conversely, there are places I bid farewell to long before knowing I must leave, places and people whose disappearance I rehearse not just to learn how to live without them when the time comes but to put off their loss by foreseeing ita bit at a time beforehand. I live in the dark so as not to be blinded when darkness comes. I do the same with life, making it more conditional and provisional than it already is, so as to forget that one day my birthday will come around and I won't be there to celebrate it. It is still unthinkable that those who cause us the greatest pain and turned us inside out could at some point in time have been totally unknown, unborn to us.

In 1847 three English children fell seriously ill after eating birthday cake decorated with arsenic-tinted green leaves.

Hey.’ Annabeth slid next to me on the bench. ‘Happy birthday.’ She was holding a huge misshapen cupcake with blue icing. I stared at her. ‘What?’ ‘It’s August eighteenth,’ she said. ‘Your birthday, right?’ I was stunned. It hadn’t even occurred to me, but she was right. I had turned sixteen this morning – the same morning I’d made the choice to give Luke the knife. The prophecy had come true right on schedule, and I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was my birthday. ‘Make a wish,’ she said. ‘Did you bake this yourself?’ I asked. ‘Tyson helped.’ ‘That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick,’ I said. ‘With extra-blue cement.’ Annabeth laughed. I thought for a second then blew out the candle. We cut it in half and shared, eating with our fingers. Annabeth sat next to me and we watched the ocean. Crickets and monsters were making noise in the woods, but otherwise it was quiet. ‘You saved the world,’ she said. ‘We saved the world.’ ‘And Rachel is the new Oracle, which means she won’t be dating anybody.’ ‘You don’t sound disappointed,’ I noticed. Annabeth shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t care.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?’ ‘You’d probably kick my butt.’ ‘You know I’d kick your butt.’ I brushed the cake off my hands. ‘When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable … Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal.’ Annabeth kept her eyes on the horizon. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Then up on Olympus,’ I said, ‘when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking –’ ‘Oh, you so wanted to.’ ‘Well, maybe a little. But I didn’t, because I thought – I didn’t want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking …’ My throat felt really dry. ‘Anyone in particular?’ Annabeth asked, her voice soft. I looked over and saw that she was trying not to smile. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ I complained. ‘I am not!’ ‘You are so not making this easy.’ Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands around my neck. ‘I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.’ When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.

With Tommy by his side but Anthony Jr. nowhere to be seen, Anthony cranks out an old 8mm projector, and soon choppy black- and-white images appear on the cream wall capturing a few snapshots from the canyon of their life—that tell nothing, and yet somehow everything. They watch old movies, from 1963, 1952, 1948, 1947—the older, the more raucous the children and parents becoming. This year, because Ingrid isn’t here, Anthony shows them something new. It’s from 1963. A birthday party, this one with happy sound, cake, unlit candles. Anthony is turning twenty. Tatiana is very pregnant with Janie. (“Mommy, look, that’s you in Grammy’s belly!” exclaims Vicky.) Harry toddling around, pursued loudly and relentlessly by Pasha—oh, how in 1999 six children love to see their fathers wild like them, how Mary and Amy love to see their precious husbands small. The delight in the den is abundant. Anthony sits on the patio, bare chested, in swimshorts, one leg draped over the other, playing his guitar, “playing Happy Birthday to myself,” he says now, except it’s not “Happy Birthday.” The joy dims slightly at the sight of their brother, their father so beautiful and whole he hurts their united hearts—and suddenly into the frame, in a mini-dress, walks a tall dark striking woman with endless legs and comes to stand close to Anthony. The camera remains on him because Anthony is singing, while she flicks on her lighter and ignites the candles on his cake; one by one she lights them as he strums his guitar and sings the number one hit of the day, falling into a burning “Ring of Fire ... ” The woman doesn’t look at Anthony, he doesn’t look at her, but in the frame you can see her bare thigh flush against the sole of his bare foot the whole time she lights his twenty candles plus one to grow on. And it burns, burns, burns . . . And when she is done, the camera—which never lies—catches just one microsecond of an exchanged glance before she walks away, just one gram of neutral matter exploding into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT. The reel ends. Next. The budding novelist Rebecca says, “Dad, who was that? Was that Grammy’s friend Vikki?” “Yes,” says Anthony. “That was Grammy’s friend Vikki.” Tak zhivya, bez radosti/bez muki/pomniu ya ushedshiye goda/i tvoi serebryannyiye ruki/v troike yeletevshey navsegda . . . So I live—remembering with sadness all the happy years now gone by, remembering your long and silver arms, forever in the troika that flew by . . . Back

Cixi’s lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity. Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi’s future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons’ brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines’ wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more “than nine million taels of silver had gone missing. Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty. Cixi’s great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amounted to 43,200 taels – a colossal sum, next to which his official salary had been a pittance. As he had died a long time ago, his son, Cixi’s grandfather, was obliged to pay half the sum, even though he worked in the Ministry of Punishments and had nothing to do with the state coffer. After three years of futile struggle to raise money, he only managed to hand over 1,800 taels, and an edict signed by the emperor confined him to prison, only to be released if and when his son, Cixi’s father, delivered the balance. The life of the family was turned upside down. Cixi, then eleven years old, had to take in sewing jobs to earn extra money – which she would remember all her life and would later talk about to her ladies-in-waiting in the court. “As she was the eldest of two daughters and three sons, her father discussed the matter with her, and she rose to the occasion. Her ideas were carefully considered and practical: what possessions to sell, what valuables to pawn, whom to turn to for loans and how to approach them. Finally, the family raised 60 per cent of the sum, enough to get her grandfather out of prison. The young Cixi’s contribution to solving the crisis became a family legend, and her father paid her the ultimate compliment: ‘This daughter of mine is really more like a son!’ Treated like a son, Cixi was able to talk to her father about things that were normally closed areas for women. Inevitably their conversations touched on official business and state affairs, which helped form Cixi’s lifelong interest. Being consulted and having her views acted on, she acquired self-confidence and never accepted the com“common assumption that women’s brains were inferior to men’s. The crisis also helped shape her future method of rule. Having tasted the bitterness of arbitrary punishment, she would make an effort to be fair to her officials.

Damn April to hell, I could be done with that one. November also. Birthdays, Christmas, dogwoods and redbuds, even football season. Live long enough, and all the things you ever loved can turn around to scorch you blind. the wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.

SELF-HELP FOR FELLOW REFUGEES If your name suggests a country where bells might have been used for entertainment, or to announce the entrances and exits of the seasons and the birthdays of gods and demons, it's probably best to dress in plain clothes when you arrive in the United States. And try not to talk too loud. If you happen to have watched armed men beat and drag your father out the front door of your house and into the back of an idling truck, before your mother jerked you from the threshold and buried your face in her skirt folds, try not to judge your mother too harshly. Don't ask her what she thought she was doing, turning a child's eyes away from history and toward that place all human aching starts. And if you meet someone in your adopted country and think you see in the other's face an open sky, some promise of a new beginning, it probably means you're standing too far. Or if you think you read in the other, as in a book whose first and last pages are missing, the story of your own birthplace, a country twice erased, once by fire, once by forgetfulness, it probably means you're standing too close. In any case, try not to let another carry the burden of your own nostalgia or hope. And if you're one of those whose left side of the face doesn't match the right, it might be a clue looking the other way was a habit your predecessors found useful for survival. Don't lament not being beautiful. Get used to seeing while not seeing. Get busy remembering while forgetting. Dying to live while not wanting to go on. Very likely, your ancestors decorated their bells of every shape and size with elaborate calendars and diagrams of distant star systems, but with no maps for scattered descendants. And I bet you can't say what language your father spoke when he shouted to your mother from the back of the truck, "Let the boy see!" Maybe it wasn't the language you used at home. Maybe it was a forbidden language. Or maybe there was too much screaming and weeping and the noise of guns in the streets. It doesn't matter. What matters is this: The kingdom of heaven is good. But heaven on earth is better. Thinking is good. But living is better. Alone in your favorite chair with a book you enjoy is fine. But spooning is even better.

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me to do that....'Always go to the funeral' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully underattended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing. In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional calamity. On a cold April night three years ago, my father died...His funeral was on a Wednesday, the middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful, and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

There are two ways to turn devils into angels: First, acknowledge things about them that you genuinely appreciate. Uncle Morty took you to the beach when you were a kid. Your mom still sends you money on your birthday. Your ex-wife is a good mother to your children. There must be something you sincerely appreciate about this person. Shift your attention from the mean and nasty things they have said or done to the kind and helpful things they have said or done—even if there are just a few or even only one. You have defined this person by their iniquities. You can just as easily—actually, more easily—define them by their redeeming qualities. It’s your movie. Change the script. Perhaps you are still arguing that the person who has hurt you has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She is evil incarnate, Rosemary’s baby conceived with Satan himself, poster child for the dark side of the Force, destined to wreak havoc and horror in the lives of everyone she touches. A nastier bitch never walked the earth. Got it. Let’s say all of this is true—the person who troubles you is a no-good, cheating, lying SOB. Now here’s the second devil-transformer. Consider: How has this person helped you to grow? What spiritual muscles have you developed that you would not have built if this person had been nicer to you? Have you learned to hold your power and self-esteem in the presence of attempted insult? Do you now speak your truth more quickly and directly? Are you now asking for what you want instead of passively deferring? Are you setting healthier boundaries? Have you deepened in patience and compassion? Do you make more self-honoring choices? There are many benefits you might have gained, or still might gain, from someone who challenges you.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the base Only sentries were stirring--they guarded the place. At the foot of each bunk sat a helmet and boot For the Santa of Soldiers to fill up with loot. The soldiers were sleeping and snoring away As they dreamed of “back home” on good Christmas Day. One snoozed with his rifle--he seemed so content. I slept with the letters my family had sent. When outside the tent there arose such a clatter. I sprang from my rack to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash. Poked out my head, and yelled, “What was that crash?” When what to my thrill and relief should appear, But one of our Blackhawks to give the all clear. More rattles and rumbles! I heard a deep whine! Then up drove eight Humvees, a jeep close behind… Each vehicle painted a bright Christmas green. With more lights and gold tinsel than I’d ever seen. The convoy commander leaped down and he paused. I knew then and there it was Sergeant McClaus! More rapid than rockets, his drivers they came When he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: “Now, Cohen! Mendoza! Woslowski! McCord! Now, Li! Watts! Donetti! And Specialist Ford!” “Go fill up my sea bags with gifts large and small! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away, all!” In the blink of an eye, to their trucks the troops darted. As I drew in my head and was turning around, Through the tent flap the sergeant came in with a bound. He was dressed all in camo and looked quite a sight With a Santa had added for this special night. His eyes--sharp as lasers! He stood six feet six. His nose was quite crooked, his jaw hard as bricks! A stub of cigar he held clamped in his teeth. And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. A young driver walked in with a seabag in tow. McClaus took the bag, told the driver to go. Then the sarge went to work. And his mission today? Bring Christmas from home to the troops far away! Tasty gifts from old friends in the helmets he laid. There were candies, and cookies, and cakes, all homemade. Many parents sent phone cards so soldiers could hear Treasured voices and laughter of those they held dear. Loving husbands and wives had mailed photos galore Of weddings and birthdays and first steps and more. And for each soldier’s boot, like a warm, happy hug, There was art from the children at home sweet and snug. As he finished the job--did I see a twinkle? Was that a small smile or instead just a wrinkle? To the top of his brow he raised up his hand And gave a salute that made me feel grand. I gasped in surprise when, his face all aglow, He gave a huge grin and a big HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! from the barracks and then from the base. HO! HO! HO! as the convoy sped up into space. As the camp radar lost him, I heard this faint call: “HAPPY CHRISTMAS, BRAVE SOLDIERS! MAY PEACE COME TO ALL!

(...) I don’t remember the way every song goes. I can’t recall ever y person I’ve met. I get names mixed up all the time. I’m terrible with birthdays. But I remember all the ways people have affected me. How our stories became memories. And if you were enough then you’re in there somewhere. Maybe it was a truth or dare kiss, Or a simple act of kindness, one that reminded me to remember this moment and mark it as a memory , so we could both have it to look back on. From this life, I’ve drawn conclusions so big, They can’t fit into the tiny comic book boxes, Because I don’t wanna risk losing the detail, Just so I can make the story fit. It’s not a trick. I remember how things felt. Which in turn makes me remember how things happened. (...) I’m pretty fantastic. It’s not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they’re mine. Which lends way to believe, That none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We’re not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own. (...)

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights. “Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back. “You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice. “Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…” “I know, I believe you.” At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket. “Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger. Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces. “Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?” I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself. “You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—” I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!” “You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.” “No!” I shrieked. “No!” He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door. I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them. But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room. “—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!

Charlie nodded, like not getting it was valid. "I don't know how to explain it. But one thing's for sure. I'm not making you birthday doughnuts because your dad guilt-tripped me. I'm making you doughnuts because I'm grateful that you're here—for whatever you being here is doing to my life. And I genuinely want you to have a happy birthday." Ugh. One of those unwelcome tears of mine spilled over. And Charlie, like a reflex, reached up and wiped it away. Like you might do for someone you cared about. "Also," Charlie said, "I burned a hundred canned biscuits before I got the hang of this, so these little guys really are miracles." I gave Charlie the wobbly smile that happens when you try to shift emotional gears. Something was making me feel shaky. Maybe that I wasn't just a writer to him. Or that he was glad to have me in his life. Or that I was doing things to him—just like he was doing things to me. "You have to eat one," Charlie said then, putting his arm around my shoulders and turning us both toward the waiting donuts. "So many canned biscuits gave their lives for this moment." And now I really smiled. Despite myself.

All of those years that Ella and I wrote to each other, I dated here and there, but never anything serious, and nothing to warrant my reputation. Even then, before I’d met her in person, Ella was the only one I wanted. I’d been waiting for her to turn eighteen. I planned to fly out to Boston after her birthday to meet her and her mother in person. I was ready to explain to them who I was and how I felt. “After Ella’s accident, when I thought I’d lost her forever, a part of me died. The women that followed were nothing but my way of trying to fill the void Ella’s disappearance created. It was a stupid way to grieve, but that’s what I was doing. Not one of those women ever came close to giving me even a fraction of the happiness I get from a single text from Ella.” Okay,

It’s the same everywhere, she thought, they’re small and they live with you and you’re in love with them and they move away and a slightly bigger version of them moves in. Then you fall in love again, only to watch that little person leave, and yet a slightly taller, more agile version, who still fits in the toddler bed, but just barely, arrives and there you go again, head over heels. Another birthday will come and this one, too, will go, pigtails and all, and so on, until your heart could burst. You see them turn two, then three and four and you miss that tiny newborn who smelled like milk, the one-year-old who teeter-tottered, and how sweet was that two-year-old who would not let go of your hand, and do you remember running alongside her bicycle at five? Where did she go? Noor

I knew you were out there somewhere,” I tell her, quirking a sad smile. “The girlfriends, women I dated, Cole’s mother . . . I never wanted to marry anyone, because they weren’t what I was looking for. I had started to think I had my sights set too high and you didn’t exist.” I clasp the back of her neck and run my thumbs down her throat. “Turns out my dream girl belongs to the one person it would kill me to hurt.

Hermione made purple and gold streamers erupt from the end of her wand and drape themselves artistically over the trees and bushes. “Nice,” said Ron, as with one final flourish of her wand, Hermione turned the leaves on the crabapple tree to gold. “You’ve really got an eye for that sort of thing.” “Thank you, Ron!” said Hermione, looking both pleased and a little confused. Harry turned away, smiling to himself. He had a funny notion that he would find a chapter on compliments when he found time to peruse his copy of Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches; he caught Ginny’s eye and grinned at her before remembering his promise to Ron and hurriedly striking up a conversation with Monsieur Delacour. “Out of the way, out of the way!” sang Mrs. Weasley, coming through the gate with what appeared to be a giant, beach-ball-sized Snitch floating in front of her. Seconds later Harry realized that it was his birthday cake, which Mrs. Weasley was suspending with her wand, rather than risk carrying it over the uneven ground. When the cake had finally landed in the middle of the table, Harry said, “That looks amazing, Mrs. Weasley.” “Oh, it’s nothing, dear,” she said fondly. Over her shoulder, Ron gave Harry the thumbs-up and mouthed, Good one.

When I took it off, I glanced in the mirror behind the dresser, and I nearly screamed when I saw the reflection. Finn was sitting behind me on the bed. His eyes, dark as night, met mine in the mirror, and I could hardly breathe. "Finn!" I gasped and whirled around to look at him. "What are you doing here?" "I missed your birthday," he said, as if that answered my question. He lowered his eyes, looking at a small box he had in his hands. "I got you something." "You got me something?" I leaned back on the dresser behind me, gripping it. "Yeah." He nodded, still staring down at the box. "I picked it up outside of Portland two weeks ago. I meant to get back in time to give it to you on your birthday." He chewed the inside of his cheek. "But now that I'm here, I'm not sure I should give it to you at all." "What are you talking about?" I asked. "It doesn't feel right." Finn rubbed his face. "I don't even know what I'm doing here." "Neither do I," I said. "Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to see you. I just...I don't understand." "I know." He sighed. "It's a ring. What I got you." His gaze moved from me to the engagement ring sitting on the dresser beside me. "And you already have one." "Why did you get me a ring?" I asked tentatively, and my heart beat erratically in my chest. I didn't know what Finn was saying or doing. "I'm not proposing to you, if that's what you're asking." He shook his head. "I saw it and thought of you. But now it seems like poor taste. And here I am, the night before your wedding sneaking in to give you a ring." "Why did you sneak in?" I asked. "I don't know." He looked away and laughed darkly. "That's a lie. I know exactly what I'm doing, but I have no idea why I'm doing it." "What are you doing?" I asked quietly. "I..." Finn stared off for a moment, then turned back to me and stood up. "Finn, I-" I began, but he held up his hand, stopping me. "No, I know you're marrying Tove," he said. "You need to do this. We both know that. It's what's best for you, and it's what I want for you." He paused. "But I want you for myself too." All I'd ever wanted from Finn was for him to admit how he felt about me, and he'd waited until the day before my wedding. It was too late to change anything, to take anything back. Not that I could have, even if I wanted to. "Why are you telling me this?" I asked with tears swimming in my eyes. "Because." Finn stepped toward me, stopping right in front of me. He looked down at me, his eyes mesmerizing me the way they always did. He reached up, brushing back a tear from my cheek. "Why?" I asked, my voice trembling. "I needed you to know," he said, as if he didn't truly understand it himself. He set the box on the dresser beside me, and his hand went to my waist, pulling me to him. I let go of the dresser and let him. My breath came out shallow as I stared up at him. "Tomorrow you will belong to someone else," Finn said. "But tonight, you're with me.

I knew you were out there somewhere,” I tell her, quirking a sad smile. “The girlfriends, women I dated, Cole’s mother…. I never wanted to marry anyone, because they weren’t what I was looking for. I had started to think I had my sights set too high, and you didn’t exist.” I clasp the back of her neck and run my thumbs down her throat. “Turns out my dream girl belongs to the one person it would kill me to hurt.” Tears

You know, I still feel in my wrists certain echoes of the pram-pusher’s knack, such as, for example, the glib downward pressure one applied to the handle in order to have the carriage tip up and climb the curb. First came an elaborate mouse-gray vehicle of Belgian make, with fat autoid tires and luxurious springs, so large that it could not enter our puny elevator. It rolled on sidewalks in a slow stately mystery, with the trapped baby inside lying supine, well covered with down, silk and fur; only his eyes moved, warily, and sometimes they turned upward with one swift sweep of their showy lashes to follow the receding of branch-patterned blueness that flowed away from the edge of the half-cocked hood of the carriage, and presently he would dart a suspicious glance at my face to see if the teasing trees and sky did not belong, perhaps to the same order of things as did rattles and parental humor. There followed a lighter carriage, and in this, as he spun along, he would tend to rise, straining at his straps; clutching at the edges; standing there less like the groggy passenger of a pleasure boat than like an entranced scientist in a spaceship; surveying the speckled skeins of a live, warm world; eyeing with philosophic interest the pillow he had managed to throw overboard; falling out himself when a strap burst one day. Still later he rode in one of those small contraptions called strollers; from initial springy and secure heights the child came lower and lower, until, when he was about one and a half, he touched ground in front of the moving stroller by slipping forward out of his seat and beating the sidewalk with his heels in anticipation of being set loose in some public garden. A new wave of evolution started to swell, gradually lifting him again from the ground, when, for his second birthday, he received a four-foot-long, silver-painted Mercedes racing car operated by inside pedals, like an organ, and in this he used to drive with a pumping, clanking noise up and down the sidewalk of the Kurfurstendamm while from open windows came the multiplied roar of a dictator still pounding his chest in the Neander valley we had left far behind.

She went around reading everything- the directions on the grits bag, Tate's notes, and the stories from her fairy-tale books she had pretended to read for years. Then one night she made a little oh sound, and took the old Bible from the shelf. Sitting at the table, she turned the thin pages carefully to the one with the family names. She found her own at the very bottom: There it was, her birthday: Miss Catherine Danielle Clark, October 10, 1945. Then, going back up the list, she read the real names of her brothers and sisters: Master Jeremy Andrew Clark, January 2, 1939. "Jeremy," she said out loud. "Jodie, I sure never thought a' you as Master Jeremy." Miss Amanda Margaret Clark, May 17, 1937. Kya touched the name with her fingers. Repeated it several times. She read on. Master Napier Murphy Clark, April 14, 1936. Kya spoke softly, "Murph, ya name was Napier." At the top, the oldest, Miss Mary Helen Clark, September 19, 1934. She rubbed her fingers over the names again, which brought faces before her eyes. They blurred, but she could see them all squeezed around the table eating stew, passing cornbread, even laughing some. She was ashamed that she had forgotten their names, but now that she'd found them, she would never let them go again. Above the list of children she read: Mister Jackson Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, June 12, 1933. Not until that moment had she known her parents' proper names. She sat there for a few minutes with the Bible open on the table. Her family before her. Time ensures children never know their parents young. Kya would never see the handsome Jake swagger into an Asheville soda fountain in early 1930, where he spotted Maria Jacques, a beauty with black curls and red lips, visiting from New Orleans.

You haven’t gotten to the point of leaving a glass for her, too.” He covered his eyes but said nothing. She pulled away his hands, and then, looking straight at him, asked, “She’s alive, isn’t she?” He nodded and sat up. “Rong, I used to think that a character in a novel was controlled by her creator, that she would be whatever the author wanted her to be, and do whatever the author wanted her to do, like God does for us.” “Wrong!” she said, standing up and beginning to pace the room. “Now you realize you were wrong. This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur. That’s how a classic is made.” “So literature, it turns out, is a perverted endeavor.” “It was like that for Shakespeare and Balzac and Tolstoy, at least. The classic images they created were born from their mental wombs. But today’s practitioners of literature have lost that creativity. Their minds give birth only to shattered fragments and freaks, whose brief lives are nothing but cryptic spasms devoid of reason. Then they sweep up these fragments into a bag they peddle under the label ‘postmodern’ or ‘deconstructionist’ or ‘symbolism’ or ‘irrational.’” “So you mean that I’ve become a writer of classic literature?” “Hardly. Your mind is only gestating an image, and it’s the easiest one of all. The minds of those classic authors gave birth to hundreds and thousands of figures. They formed the picture of an era, and that’s something that only a superhuman can accomplish. But what you’ve done isn’t easy. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it.” “Have you ever done it?” “Just once,” she said simply, and dropped the subject. She grabbed his neck, and said, “Forget it. I don’t want that birthday present anymore. Come back to a normal life, okay?” “And if all this continues—what then?” She studied him for a few seconds, then let go of him and shook her head with a smile. “I knew it was too late.” Picking up her bag from the bed, she left. Then

On another note - Sarton writes about "people in their thirties mourning their lost youth because we have given them no ethos that makes maturity appear an asset." I very much feel this to be true. Turning twenty-one is the nadir of American achievement, one can get smashed legally, and as there are no further milestones after that, each succeeding birthday reeks of diminishment. People start to lie about their age, as if maturity is a thing to be ashamed of.

Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t, she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline, that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life.

Evelyn did more than complain. He also looked for ways to clear the air. He accepted appointment as one of London’s commissioners of sewers. And since he was interested in gardening and in trees, his inventive mind turned to moving industry out of London and perfuming the city’s precincts with flowering plants—reversing, as it were, at least locally, the transition from wood to coal. King Charles II had been restored to the throne on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May 1660,

Uh… not sure buying the entire store for that boy is good, Chace. If he’s living on the street, the rest of the homeless population in Carnal will fall on him like vultures,” I remarked. Then he turned to me. “Got one homeless guy in town, darlin’. He calls himself Outlaw Al. He celebrated his seven hundredth birthday this year and looks it. You talk to him, he’ll swear he was the one who shot Billy the Kid. Every feral cat in Carnal will claw you soon as look at you but of any day or night, one or a dozen of ‘em will be curled into Al like he’s their Momma. He has two teeth. And I don’t see good things for his dental future since Shambles and Sunny built a small lean-to behind La-La Land so he’ll have some protection from exposure. He was much obliged for this effort. Moved in while Shambles was still hammering in the nails. He mostly stays there except when it’s his time to howl at the moon. And Shambles gives him baked goods he doesn’t sell. I think our kid’ll be good.

Your father’s death was an accident,” Kate said. “An accident. A terrible, horrible twist of fate that no one could have predicted.” Anthony shrugged fatalistically. “I’ll probably go the same way.” “Oh, for the love of—” Kate managed to bite her tongue a split second before she blasphemed. “Anthony, I could die tomorrow as well. I could have died today when that carriage rolled on top of me.” He paled. “Don’t ever remind me of that.” “My mother died when she was my age,” Kate reminded him harshly. “Did you ever think of that? By your laws, I should be dead by my next birthday.” “Don’t be—” “Silly?” she finished for him. Silence reigned for a full minute. Finally, Anthony said, his voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t know if I can get past this.” “You don’t have to get past it,” Kate said. She caught her lower lip, which had begun to tremble, between her teeth, and then laid her hand on an empty spot on the bed. “Could you come over here so I can hold your hand?” Anthony responded instantly; the warmth of her touch flooded him, seeping through his body until it caressed his very soul. And in that moment he realized that this was about more than love. This woman made him a better person. He’d been good and strong and kind before, but with her at his side, he was something more. And together they could do anything. It almost made him think that forty might not be such an impossible dream. “You don’t have to get past it,” she said again, her words blowing softly between them. “To be honest, I don’t see how you could get completely past it until you turn thirty-nine. But what you can do”— she gave his hand a squeeze, and Anthony somehow felt even stronger than he had just moments before—“ is refuse to allow it to rule your life.” “I realized that this morning,” he whispered, “when I knew I had to tell you I loved you. But somehow now— now I know it.” She nodded, and he saw that her eyes were filling with tears. “You have to live each hour as if it’s your last,” she said, “and each day as if you were immortal." -Kate & Anthony

Today.” Cas reached between us, curling his fingers under my chin. He brought my gaze to his. “It turned midnight just as I arrived. April 20th. Your birthday.” (...) Cas smiled. Just one dimple was visible, and that surprise gave way to a sweet rise of love, so much love that it almost hurt for my heart to be so full of it. “You remembered,” I whispered. “Apparently, someone had to,” he teased, sweeping his thumb over my cheek. His eyes fixed on mine. “And I would never forget, Poppy. I will be with you for each and every birthday.

We walk inside, and I stop short. Our booth, the one we always sit in, has pale pink balloons tied around it. There’s a round cake in the center of the table, tons of candles, pink frosting with sprinkles and Happy Birthday, Lara Jean scrawled in white frosting. Suddenly I see people’s heads pop up from under the booths and from behind menus--all of our friends, still in their prom finery: Lucas, Gabe, Gabe’s date Keisha, Darrell, Pammy, Chris. “Surprise!” everyone screams. I spin around. “Oh my God, Peter!” He’s still grinning. He looks at his watch. “It’s midnight. Happy birthday, Lara Jean.” I leap up and hug him. “This is just exactly what I wanted to do on my prom night birthday and I didn’t even know it.” Then I let go of him and run over to the booth. Everyone gets out and hugs me. “I didn’t even know people knew it was my birthday tomorrow! I mean today!” I say. “Of course we knew it was your birthday,” Lucas says. Darrell says, “My boy’s been planning this for weeks.” “It was so endearing,” Pammy says. “We called me to ask what kind of pan he should use for the cake.” Chris says, “He called me, too. I was like, how the hell should I know?” “And you!” I hit Chris on the arm. “I thought you were leaving to go clubbing!” “I still might after I steal some fries. My night’s just getting started, babe.” She pulls me in for a hug and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday, girl.” I turn to Peter and say, “I can’t believe you did this.” “I baked that cake myself,” he brags. “Box, but still.” He takes off his jacket and pulls a lighter out of his jacket pocket and starts lighting the candles. Gabe pulls out a lit candle and helps him. Then Peter hops his butt on the table and sits down, his legs hanging off the edge. “Come on.” I look around. “Um…” That’s when I hear the opening notes of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. My hands fly to my cheeks. I can’t believe it. Peter’s recreating the end scene from Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan sit on a table with a birthday cake in between them. When we watched the movie a few months ago, I said it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. And now he’s doing it for me.

Being thirty-nine is also hard; a whole year in which to meditate in glum astonishment that one stands on the threshold of middle age. The frontiers are arbitrary, but not any less vivid for that. Although a woman on her fortieth birthday is hardly different from what she was when she was still thirty-nine, the day seems like a turning point. But long before actually becoming a woman of forty, she has been steeling herself against the depression she will feel. One of the greatest tragedies of each woman’s life is simply getting older; it is certainly the longest tragedy.

By three months old, 40 percent of infants watch screen media regularly; by two years, 90 percent do. By her third birthday, the average American child recognizes one hundred brand logos. The typical child is exposed to forty thousand screen ads per year. Children know the names of more branded characters than of real animals. By her tenth birthday, the average American child knows three hundred to four hundred brands. Research shows over and over that preschoolers will overwhelmingly think advertised products, branded products, are superior even when the actual contents are identical.

But then they hand you your beautiful baby, and the baby gazes up at you and says hello, and your heart just melts.” “It talks?” Sophie asked, then remembered Alden telling her months earlier that elvin babies spoke from birth. It sounded even stranger now that she could picture it. “Your speaking caused quite the uproar,” Mr. Forkle told her. “Though luckily no one could understand the Enlightened Language, so they thought you were babbling. I spent the majority of your infancy inventing excuses for the elvin things you did.” “Okay,” Sophie said, wishing he’d stop with the weird-info overload. “But what I mean is . . . I’ve been counting my age from my birthday.” Mr. Forkle didn’t look surprised. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “How could I? Humans built everything around their birthdays. As long as you were living with them I had to let you do the same. And since you’ve been in the Lost Cities, we’ve had so little contact. I assumed someone would notice, since your proper ID is on your Foxfire record—and in the registry. But I don’t think anyone realized you were counting differently.” “Alden wouldn’t have thought to check,” Della agreed. “Neither of us knew humans didn’t count inception.” “So wait,” Biana jumped in, “does that mean that by our rules Sophie is—” “Thirty-nine weeks older than she’s been saying,” Mr. Forkle finished for her. Fitz cocked his head as he stared at Sophie, like everything had turned sideways. “So then you’re not thirteen . . .” “Not according to the way we count,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “Going by Sophie’s ID, she’s fourteen and a little more than five months old.” Keefe laughed. “Only Foster would find a way to age nine months in a day. Also, welcome to the cool fourteen-year-olds club!” He held out his hand for a high five.

Cecily let her cheek fall to Leta’s shoulder and hugged her back. It felt so nice to be loved by someone in the world. Since her mother’s death, she’d had no one of her own. It was a lonely life, despite the excitement and adventure her work held for her. She wasn’t openly affectionate at all, except with Leta. “For God’s sake, next you’ll be rocking her to sleep at night!” came a deep, disgusted voice at Cecily’s back, and Cecily stiffened because she recognized it immediately. “She’s my baby girl,” Leta told her tall, handsome son with a grin. “Shut up.” Cecily turned a little awkwardly. She hadn’t expected this. Tate Winthrop towered over both of them. His jet-black hair was loose as he never wore it in the city, falling thick and straight almost to his waist. He was wearing a breastplate with buckskin leggings and high-topped mocassins. There were two feathers straight up in his hair with notches that had meaning among his people, marks of bravery. Cecily tried not to stare at him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. Since her seventeenth birthday, Tate had been her world. Fortunately he didn’t realize that her mad flirting hid a true emotion. In fact, he treated her exactly as he had when she came to him for comfort after her mother had died suddenly; as he had when she came to him again with bruises all over her thin, young body from her drunken stepfather’s violent attack. Although she dated, she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She had secret terrors of intimacy that had never really gone away, except when she thought of Tate that way. She loved him… “Why aren’t you dressed properly?” Tate asked, scowling at her skirt and blouse. “I bought you buckskins for your birthday, didn’t I?” “Three years ago,” she said without meeting his probing eyes. She didn’t like remembering that he’d forgotten her birthday this year. “I gained weight since then.” “Oh. Well, find something you like here…” She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to buy me anything else,” she said flatly, and didn’t back down from the sudden menace in his dark eyes. “I’m not dressing up like a Lakota woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blond. I don’t want to be mistaken for some sort of overstimulated Native American groupie buying up artificial artifacts and enthusing over citified Native American flute music, trying to act like a member of the tribe.” “You belong to it,” he returned. “We adopted you years ago.” “So you did,” she said. That was how he thought of her-a sister. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to think of her. She smiled faintly. “But I won’t pass for a Lakota, whatever I wear.” “You could take your hair down,” he continued thoughtfully. She shook her head. She only let her hair loose at night, when she went to bed. Perhaps she kept it tightly coiled for pure spite, because he loved long hair and she knew it. “How old are you?” he asked, trying to remember. “Twenty, isn’t it?” “I was, give years ago,” she said, exasperated. “You used to work for the CIA. I seem to remember that you went to college, too, and got a law degree. Didn’t they teach you how to count?” He looked surprised. Where had the years gone? She hadn’t aged, not visibly.

On your left you can see the Stationary Circus in all its splendor! Not far nor wide will you find dancing bears more nimble than ours, ringmasters more masterful, Lunaphants more buoyant!” September looked down and leftward as best she could. She could see the dancing bears, the ringmaster blowing peonies out of her mouth like fire, an elephant floating in the air, her trunk raised, her feet in mid-foxtrot—and all of them paper. The skin of the bears was all folded envelopes; they stared out of sealing-wax eyes. The ringmaster wore a suit of birthday invitations dazzling with balloons and cakes and purple-foil presents; her face was a telegram. Even the elephant seemed to be made up of cast-off letterheads from some far-off office, thick and creamy and stamped with sure, bold letters. A long, sweeping trapeze swung out before them. Two acrobats held on, one made of grocery lists, the other of legal opinions. September could see Latin on the one and lemons, ice, bread (not rye!), and lamb chops on the other in a cursive hand. When they let go of the trapeze-bar, they turned identical flips in the air and folded out into paper airplanes, gliding in circles all the way back down to the peony-littered ring. September gasped and clapped her hands—but the acrobats were already long behind them, bowing and catching paper roses in their paper teeth.

For some crazy reason, he believed in her, and that was extraordinary. No one had ever believed in her before. Not her mother, who used to call her worthless every time she tried to help around the house and worse than worthless if she didn’t try to help. Not her father, who had informed her on her sixth birthday that she shouldn’t have been born, before he walked out the door never to come back. Not her sisters, who stole her clothes whenever she didn’t hide them. Not her older brother, who used to hit her but only in places it wouldn’t show. Not her teacher, who’d called her a liar when she’d tried to say she felt spirits. Oh, how she’d loved the day he had been proved wrong! She’d loved the moment when it was her turn to walk out that door!

A perfect birthday poem called ‘When You Are Old.’” Everyone chortled, and Eoin looked confused. “Are you old, Mother?” he asked. “No, darling boy. I’m ageless,” I answered. Everyone laughed again, but the O’Toole sisters urged Thomas on, pleading for the poem. Thomas stood, and with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched, he began. “When you are old and grey and full of sleep . . .” Thomas enunciated “old and grey,” and everyone tittered again, but I knew the poem well, knew every word, and my heart had turned to liquid in my chest. “When you are old and grey and full of sleep,” he repeated over the chuckling, “and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; how many loved your moments of glad grace, and loved your beauty with love false or true, but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.” The room had grown quiet, and Maggie’s lips trembled, the soft sweetness of memory gleaming in her eyes. It was the kind of poem that made old women remember how it felt to be young. As he spoke, Thomas looked at everyone in turn, but the poem was for me; I was the pilgrim soul with a changing face. He finished, reflecting on how love fled and “paced upon the mountains overhead and hid his face amid a crowd of stars.” Everyone clapped and stamped their feet, and Thomas bowed jauntily, accepting the praise. But he met my gaze before taking his seat. When I dragged my eyes away, I found Brigid

When my firstborn turned six months old, I decided that this milestone was definitely worth celebrating. And what started as a one-off event quickly became a family tradition: For my kids' half birthdays I make half a cake (it looks like someone just cut a cake down the middle and made the other half disappear), and we sing every other syllable of the "Happy Birthday" song (I'm really good at complicating things, and singing only the first half of the song seemed unfair to the second half). We don't do gifts or a big bash, and we don't blow out candles and make wishes, because wishes should be made only full throttle. We just end the day with a little celebration after dinner, something kind of silly and fun. And cake. Because everything in life should end with sugar.

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

Mom?” Then again, louder. “Mom?” She turned around so quickly, she knocked the pan off the stove and nearly dropped the gray paper into the open flame there. I saw her reach back and slap her hand against the knobs, twisting a dial until the smell of gas disappeared. “I don’t feel good. Can I stay home today?” No response, not even a blink. Her jaw was working, grinding, but it took me walking over to the table and sitting down for her to find her voice. “How—how did you get in here?” “I have a bad headache and my stomach hurts,” I told her, putting my elbows up on the table. I knew she hated when I whined, but I didn’t think she hated it enough to come over and grab me by the arm again. “I asked you how you got in here, young lady. What’s your name?” Her voice sounded strange. “Where do you live?” Her grip on my skin only tightened the longer I waited to answer. It had to have been a joke, right? Was she sick, too? Sometimes cold medicine did funny things to her. Funny things, though. Not scary things. “Can you tell me your name?” she repeated. “Ouch!” I yelped, trying to pull my arm away. “Mom, what’s wrong?” She yanked me up from the table, forcing me onto my feet. “Where are your parents? How did you get in this house?” Something tightened in my chest to the point of snapping. “Mom, Mommy, why—” “Stop it,” she hissed, “stop calling me that!” “What are you—?” I think I must have tried to say something else, but she dragged me over to the door that led out into the garage. My feet slid against the wood, skin burning. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?” I cried. I tried twisting out of her grasp, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Not until we were at the door to the garage and she pushed my back up against it. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I know you’re confused, but I promise that I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you got into this house, and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know—” “I live here!” I told her. “I live here! I’m Ruby!” When she looked at me again, I saw none of the things that made Mom my mother. The lines that formed around her eyes when she smiled were smoothed out, and her jaw was clenched around whatever she wanted to say next. When she looked at me, she didn’t see me. I wasn’t invisible, but I wasn’t Ruby. “Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember. Please!” She put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the door handle. “My husband is a police officer. He’ll be able to help you get home. Wait in here—and don’t touch anything.” The door opened and I was pushed into a wall of freezing January air. I stumbled down onto the dirty, oil-stained concrete, just managing to catch myself before I slammed into the side of her car. I heard the door shut behind me, and the lock click into place; heard her call Dad’s name as clearly as I heard the birds in the bushes outside the dark garage. She hadn’t even turned on the light for me. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.

Pulling back, he gave her a little space and grinned as she found her balance again. “Do you think that will ever get old?” Harper asked with an embarrassed blush. “Christ, I hope not. Just remember how you feel right now because you might be really mad at me in about one minute.” “Uh-oh. I don’t think I like the sound of that.” Harper raised an eyebrow at him. He took her hand and led her toward the studio before pulling her in front of him, her back to his chest. It was the safest position to avoid a kick in the nuts and the best position to block a fast escape. He felt Harper’s quick intake of breath as she turned to face him with a hand over her mouth. “What did you do?” she said through her fingers. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.” He pushed her through the door as everyone inside shouted, “Surprise!

July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840’s. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July. When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have ‘taken’ what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have ‘taken’ what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life. * * *

If I could cut out my beating heart and put it in a box and forget about it, I would. Maybe I would pad the box with our photos of you, our love letters, a lock of your hair and that heart-shaped perfume bottle, the one that I gave you for your birthday. You always said it was your favorite. Maybe if I put the box up in the attic, some place out of sight and sound, I could forget you. (sigh) I force myself to look around my yard. The sun is brilliant against the bright blue sky, birds are singing out their borders and gathering twigs and grasses for nesting, and the late-season daffodils are bursting an egg-yolk yellow. I feel myself smile. For the first time this season, I spot a Peace rose, a sunshine-swelled bloom of yellow and pink flame. I inhale the bloom's faintly sweet fragrance, which floats delicate memories of you across my mind's eye — I am happy. Without thinking, I turn to the house to call you. If only It was that easy.

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre felt later, that in a choice between Terror and Slavery one chooses Terror, 'not for its own sake, but because, in this era of flux, it upholds the exigencies proper to the aesthetics of Art.' The fictions of modernist literature were revolutionary, new, though affirming a relation of complementarity with the past. These fictions were, I think it is clear, related to others, which helped to shape the disastrous history of our time. Fictions, notably the fiction of apocalypse, turn easily into myths; people will live by that which was designed only to know by. Lawrence would be the writer to discuss here, if there were time; apocalypse works in Woman in Love, and perhaps even in Lady Chatterley's Lover, but not n Apocalypse, which is failed myth. It is hard to restore the fictive status of what has become mythical; that, I take it, is what Mr. Saul Bellow is talking about in his assaults on wastelandism, the cant of alienation. In speaking of the great men of early modernism we have to make very subtle distinctions between the work itself, in which the fictions are properly employed, and obiter dicta in which they are not, being either myths or dangerous pragmatic assertions. When the fictions are thus transformed there is not only danger but a leak, as it were, of reality; and what we feel about. all these men at times is perhaps that they retreated inso some paradigm, into a timeless and unreal vacuum from which all reality had been pumped. Joyce, who was a realist, was admired by Eliot because he modernized myth, and attacked by Lewis because he concerned himself with mess, the disorders of common perception. But Ulysses ,alone of these great works studies and develops the tension between paradigm and reality, asserts the resistance of fact to fiction, human freedom and unpredictability against plot. Joyce chooses a Day; it is a crisis ironically treated. The day is full of randomness. There are coincidences, meetings that have point, and coincidences which do not. We might ask whether one of the merits of the book is not its lack of mythologizing; compare Joyce on coincidence with the Jungians and their solemn concordmyth, the Principle of Synchronicity. From Joyce you cannot even extract a myth of Negative Concord; he shows us fiction fitting where it touches. And Joyce, who probably knew more about it than any of the others, was not at tracted by the intellectual opportunities or the formal elegance of fascism.

I didn’t get the time to tell you, or to hold you, or get there to holding you without any awkwardness. It breaks my heart, not a little but a lot, to see how things have turned out and once upon a time i would try to set them right, but now i know there is no point, in trying or in hoping, because it is how it is, and not much can be done, or should be done, but i still wanted to tell you, maybe one of these days I will, maybe I won’t but I wanted to tell you that I wanted those things with you. Meeting you for coffee on a rainy day, in a cafe somewhere between our homes. Spending the evening sitting by the sea, looking at the waves, listening to the noise and chaos of the city around us. Talking a walk with you in that park where we met the second time. Watching a movie with you. Having you over, coming over to yours. Going out to bars, birthday celebrations. Fighting sometimes, crazy loving the next. I wanted these things, and a few more. Oh god, i really wanted them with you.

The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a bus. Like I felt the wind of the bus. I could even see a couple of the passengers, all shaken by a potential suicide. And out of nowhere, the guy rushes over, yanks me toward him, and escorts me out of the street.” “The birthday boy?” “No, different guy. You all start to look the same after a while, you know that? Anyway, we were both so high on adrenaline, we couldn’t stop laughing the whole night. Then he asked me out. Now one of our jokes is about that time I flung myself into traffic to avoid him.” “You were in shock.” “No, I wasn’t.” “Why isn’t the joke that he saved your life?” “I don’t know, Amos,” I said, folding my fingers together. “Maybe we’re both waiting for the day I turn around and say, ‘That’s right, asshole, I did fling myself into traffic to avoid you.’ I’m joking.” “Are you?” “Am I?” I mimicked him. “Should the day come when you manage to face-plant yourself into a relationship, you’ll find there are certain fragile truths every couple has. Sometimes I’m uncomfortable with the power, knowing I could break us up if I wanted. Other times, I want to blow it up just because it’s there. But then the feeling passes.” “That’s bleak.” “To you, it is. But I’m not like you. I don’t need to escape every room I’m in.” “But you are like me. You think you want monogamy, but you probably don’t if you dated me.” “You’re faulting me for liking you now?” “All I’m saying is you can’t just will yourself into being satisfied with this guy.” “Watch me,” I said, trying to burn a hole in his face. “If it were me, the party would have been our first date and it never would have ended.” “Oh, yes it would have,” I said, laughing. “The date would have lasted one week, but the whole relationship would have lasted one month.” “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right.” “I know I’m right.” “It wouldn’t have lasted.” “This is what I’m saying.” “Because if I were this dude, I would have left you by now.” Before I could say anything, Amos excused himself to pee. On the bathroom door was a black and gold sticker in the shape of a man. I felt a rage rise up all the way to my eyeballs, thinking of how naturally Amos associated himself with that sticker, thinking of him aligning himself with every powerful, brilliant, thoughtful man who has gone through that door as well as every stupid, entitled, and cruel one, effortlessly merging with a class of people for whom the world was built. I took my phone out, opening the virtual cuckoo clocks, trying to be somewhere else. I was confronted with a slideshow of a female friend’s dead houseplants, meant to symbolize inadequacy within reason. Amos didn’t have a clue what it was like to be a woman in New York, unsure if she’s with the right person. Even if I did want to up and leave Boots, dating was not a taste I’d acquired. The older a woman got, the more diligent she had to become about not burdening men with the gory details of her past, lest she scare them off. That was the name of the game: Don’t Scare the Men. Those who encouraged you to indulge in your impulse to share, largely did so to expedite a decision. They knew they were on trial too, but our courtrooms had more lenient judges.

The cake did look fantastic, though. There were photos. Shane cut into the thing, groaned at the sight of the chocolate cake beneath the vanilla frosting, but he took a piece – the King Kong piece – and ate it anyway. Michael gave him a present of a set of silver-coated throwing stars, which Shane greatly admired until Eve sharply reminded him they were not for home use, except in emergencies; Eve’s present was a t-shirt with an insulting graphic on it, of course. Claire saved her present for last. He unwrapped it and raised his eyebrows. “A book,” he said. “It’s a how-to book,” she said, “on how to kill zombies. But there’s a chapter at the end on vampires, too. Oh, and mummies, but we don’t see a whole lot of those around here.” “Useful,” he said, and started to put it aside. Then he frowned and flipped through it. There was a marker in the middle, and he pulled it out – a man’s silver bracelet. In the middle were engraved his initials. He turned it in the light, admiring it, then put it on and reached out for her hand to pull her closer. She got a kiss, a long, sweet one, and he brushed her hair back as he whispered, “I love you.” “Happy birthday,” she said. “And next time? Eat the stupid cupcake.

He's right,you know," Edward was saying almost before I'd made it into my room. I had crept through the house unnecessarily. No one was home. "Your assertions have lost a bit of their value these days, Mr. Willing." "You know," he repeated. I tossed my coat onto the bed. The stark black and white of my quilt was broken by a purple stain now, the result of a peaceful interlude with grape juice turning into a gentle wrestling match.The stain was the size of my palm and shaked like, I thought, an alligator. Alex insisted it was a map of Italy. Later, we'd dripped the rest of the juice onto the thick pages of my drawing pad, finding pictures in the splotches like the Rorschach inkblots used in psychology. "Well," he'd said in response to my pagoda, antheater, and Viking, "verdict's in.You're nuts." The pictures were tacked to my wall, unaccustomed spots of color. I'd penciled in our choices. Viking (E), pineapple (A). Lantern (E), cheese (A). Crown (E), birthday cake (A) were over my desk, over Edward. I turned on my computer. It binged cheerfully at me. I had mail. From: abainbr@thewillingschool.org To: fmarino@thewillingschool.org Date: December 15, 3:50 p.m. Subect: Should you choose to accept... Tuesday. I'll pick you up at 10:00 a.m. Ask no questions. Tell no one. -Alex "Ah, subterfuge" came from over the desk. "Shut up, Edward," I said.

a like position, can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried.” Lincoln would turn fifty-two the next day. The death he referred to was that of his second son, Edward, who had died in 1850 just shy of his fourth birthday, the cause thought to have been tuberculosis. “To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington.” Only with God’s guidance and support, the same that “directed and protected” George Washington, would he succeed, he said. “Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To him I commend you all—permit me to ask that with equal security and faith you all will invoke His wisdom and guidance for me.” By this point, witnesses agree, as rain fell and Lincoln visibly struggled with powerful emotions, a veil of eye-glistening sorrow descended over the crowd. “With these few words,” he said, “I must leave you—for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

Are you ready, children?” Father Mikhail walked through the church. “Did I keep you waiting?” He took his place in front of them at the altar. The jeweler and Sofia stood nearby. Tatiana thought they might have already finished that bottle of vodka. Father Mikhail smiled. “Your birthday today,” he said to Tatiana. “Nice birthday present for you, no?” She pressed into Alexander. “Sometimes I feel that my powers are limited by the absence of God in the lives of men during these trying times,” Father Mikhail began. “But God is still present in my church, and I can see He is present in you. I am very glad you came to me, children. Your union is meant by God for your mutual joy, for the help and comfort you give one another in prosperity and adversity and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children. I want to send you righteously on your way through life. Are you ready to commit yourselves to each other?” “We are,” they said. “The bond and the covenant of marriage was established by God in creation. Christ himself adorned this manner of life by his first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. A marriage is a symbol of the mystery of the union between Christ and His Church. Do you understand that those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder?” “We do,” they said. “Do you have the rings?” “We do.” Father Mikhail continued. “Most gracious God,” he said, holding the cross above their heads, “look with favor upon this man and this woman living in a world for which Your Son gave His life. Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world. Defend this man and this woman from every enemy. Lead them into peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle upon their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their friendship, in their sleeping and in their waking, in their joys and their sorrows, in their life and in their death.” Tears trickled down Tatiana’s face. She hoped Alexander wouldn’t notice. Father Mikhail certainly had. Turning to Tatiana and taking her hands, Alexander smiled, beaming at her unrestrained happiness. Outside, on the steps of the church, he lifted her off the ground and swung her around as they kissed ecstatically. The jeweler and Sofia clapped apathetically, already down the steps and on the street. “Don’t hug her so tight. You’ll squeeze that child right out of her,” said Sofia to Alexander as she turned around and lifted her clunky camera. “Oh, wait. Hold on. Let me take a picture of the newlyweds.” She clicked once. Twice. “Come to me next week. Maybe I’ll have some paper by then to develop them.” She waved. “So you still think the registry office judge should have married us?” Alexander grinned. “He with his ‘of sound mind’ philosophy on marriage?” Tatiana shook her head. “You were so right. This was perfect. How did you know this all along?” “Because you and I were brought together by God,” Alexander replied. “This was our way of thanking Him.” Tatiana chuckled. “Do you know it took us less time to get married than to make love the first time?” “Much less,” Alexander said, swinging her around in the air. “Besides, getting married is the easy part. Just like making love. It was the getting you to make love to me that was hard. It was the getting you to marry me…” “I’m sorry. I was so nervous.” “I know,” he said. He still hadn’t put her down. “I thought the chances were twenty-eighty you were actually going to go through with it.” “Twenty against?” “Twenty for.” “Got to have a little more faith, my husband,” said Tatiana, kissing his lips.

The next morning I told Mom I couldn’t go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same thing that’s always wrong.” “You’re sick?” “I’m sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything.” She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. “What’s everything?” I started counting on my fingers: “The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry—” “Who’s Larry?” “The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says ‘I promise it’s for food’ after he asks for money.” She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. “How you don’t know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no raison d’être, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it’s cheaper . . . ” That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn’t leave while I was still going. “ . . . domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they’re embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there’s nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity at school, Grandma’s coupons, storage facilities, people who don’t know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won’t be humans in fifty years—

The thing about being barren is that you're not allowed to get away from it. Not when you're in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

I mean, what is an un-birthday present?” “A present given when it isn’t your birthday, of course.” Alice considered a little. “I like birthday presents best,” she said at last. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “How many days are there in a year?” “Three hundred and sixty-five,” said Alice. “And how many birthdays have you?” “One.” “And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?” “Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.” Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. “I’d rather see that done on paper,” he said. Alice couldn’t help smiling as she took out her memorandum-book, and worked the sum for him: Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. “That seems to be done right—” he began. “You’re holding it upside down!” Alice interrupted. “To be sure I was!” Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. “I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—” “Certainly,” said Alice. “And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!” “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’” “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!” “Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, “what that means?” “Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went. During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time. Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A

A few years ago, a couple of young men from my church came to our home for dinner. During the course of the dinner, the conversation turned from religion to various world mythologies and we began to play the game of ‘Name That Character.” To play this game, you pick a category such as famous actors, superheroes or historical characters. In turn, each person describes events in a famous character’s life while everyone else tries to guess who the character is. Strategically you try to describe the deeds of a character in such a way that it might fit any number of characters in that category. After three guesses, if no one knows who your character is, then you win. Choosing the category of Bible Characters, we played a couple of fairly easy rounds with the typical figures, then it was my turn. Now, knowing these well meaning young men had very little religious experience or understanding outside of their own religion, I posed a trick question. I said, “Now my character may seem obvious, but please wait until the end of my description to answer.” I took a long breath for dramatic effect, and began, “My character was the son of the King of Heaven and a mortal woman.” Immediately both young men smiled knowingly, but I raised a finger asking them to wait to give their responses. I continued, “While he was just a baby, a jealous rival attempted to kill him and he was forced into hiding for several years. As he grew older, he developed amazing powers. Among these were the ability to turn water into wine and to control the mental health of other people. He became a great leader and inspired an entire religious movement. Eventually he ascended into heaven and sat with his father as a ruler in heaven.” Certain they knew who I was describing, my two guests were eager to give the winning answer. However, I held them off and continued, “Now I know adding these last parts will seem like overkill, but I simply cannot describe this character without mentioning them. This person’s birthday is celebrated on December 25th and he is worshipped in a spring festival. He defied death, journeyed to the underworld to raise his loved ones from the dead and was resurrected. He was granted immortality by his Father, the king of the gods, and was worshipped as a savior god by entire cultures.” The two young men were practically climbing out of their seats, their faces beaming with the kind of smile only supreme confidence can produce. Deciding to end the charade I said, “I think we all know the answer, but to make it fair, on the count of three just yell out the answer. One. Two. Three.” “Jesus Christ” they both exclaimed in unison – was that your answer as well? Both young men sat back completely satisfied with their answer, confident it was the right one…, but I remained silent. Five seconds ticked away without a response, then ten. The confidence of my two young friends clearly began to drain away. It was about this time that my wife began to shake her head and smile to herself. Finally, one of them asked, “It is Jesus Christ, right? It has to be!” Shaking my head, I said, “Actually, I was describing the Greek god Dionysus.

Jackson gaped at her, wondering how this had all turned so terrible wrong. But he knew how. The woman was clearly daft. Bedlam-witted. And trying to drive him in the same direction. "You can't be serious. Since when do you know anything about investigating people?" She planted her hands on her hips. "You won't do it, so I must." God save him, she was the most infuriating, maddening-"How do you propose to manage that?" She shrugged. "Ask them questions, I suppose. The house party for Oliver's birthday is next week. Lord Devonmont is already coming, and it will be easy to convince Gran to invite my other two. Once they're here, I could try sneaking into their rooms and listening in on their conversations or perhaps bribing their servants-" "You've lost your bloody mind," he hissed. Only after she lifted an eyebrow did he realize he'd cursed so foully in front of her. But the woman would turn a sane man into a blithering idiot! The thought of her wandering in and out of men's bedchambers, risking her virtue and her reputation, made his blood run cold. "You don't seem to understand," she said in a clipped tone, as if speaking to a child. "I have to catch a husband somehow. I need help, and I've nowhere else to turn. Minerva is rarely here, and Gran's matchmaking efforts are as subtle as a sledgehammer. And even if my brothers and their wives could do that sort of work, they're preoccupied with their own affairs. That leaves you, who seem to think that suitors drop from the skies at my whim. If I can't even entice you to help me for money, then I'll have to manage on my own." Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. Hell and blazes, she was liable to attempt such an idiotic thing, too. She had some fool notion she was invincible. That's why she spent her time shooting at targets with her brother's friends, blithely unconcerned that her rifle might misfire or a stray bullet hit her by mistake. The wench did as she pleased, and the men in her family let her. Someone had to curb her insanity, and it looked as if it would have to be him. "All right!" he called out. "I'll do it." She halted but didn't turn around. "You'll find out what I need in order to snag one of my choices as a husband?" "Yes." "Even if it means being a trifle underhanded?" He gritted his teeth. This would be pure torture. The underhandedness didn't bother him; he'd be as underhanded as necessary to get rid of those damned suitors. But he'd have to be around the too-tempting wench a great deal, if only to make sure the bastards didn't compromise her. Well, he'd just have to find something to send her running the other way. She wanted facts? By thunder, he'd give her enough damning facts to blacken her suitors thoroughly. Then what? If you know of some eligible gentleman you can strong-arm into courting me, then by all means, tell me. I'm open to suggestions. All right, so he had no one to suggest. But he couldn't let her marry any of her ridiculous choices. They would make her miserable-he was sure of it. He must make her see that she was courting disaster. Then he'd find someone more eligible for her. Somehow. She faced him. "Well?" "Yes," he said, suppressing a curse. "I'll do whatever you want." A disbelieving laugh escaped her. "That I'd like to see." When he scowled, she added hastily, "But thank you. Truly. And I'm happy to pay you extra for your efforts, as I said." He stiffened. "No need." "Nonsense," she said firmly. "It will be worth it to have your discretion." His scowl deepened. "My clients always have my discretion.

So, what did you want to watch?’ ‘Thought we might play a game instead,’ he said, holding up a familiar dark green box. ‘Found this on the bottom shelf of your DVD cupboard … if you tilt the glass, the champagne won’t froth like that.’ Neve finished pouring champagne into the 50p champagne flutes she’d got from the discount store and waited until Max had drunk a good half of his in two swift swallows. ‘The thing is, you might find it hard to believe but I can be very competitive and I have an astonishing vocabulary from years spent having no life and reading a lot – and well, if you play Scrabble with me, I’ll totally kick your arse.’ Max was about to eat his first bite of molten mug cake but he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘You’re gonna kick my arse?’ ‘Until it’s black and blue and you won’t be able to sit down for a week.’ That sounded very arrogant. ‘Really, Max, Mum stopped me from playing when I was thirteen after I got a score of four hundred and twenty-seven, and when I was at Oxford, I used to play with two Linguistics post-grads and an English don.’ ‘Well, my little pancake girlfriend, I played Scrabble against Carol Vorderman for a Guardian feature and I kicked her arse because Scrabble has got nothing to do with vocabulary; it’s logic and tactics,’ Max informed her loftily, taking a huge bite of the cake. For a second, Neve hoped that it was as foul-tasting as she suspected just to get Max back for that snide little speech, but he just licked the back of the spoon thoughtfully. ‘This is surprisingly more-ish, do you want some?’ ‘I think I’ll pass.’ ‘Well, you’re not getting out of Scrabble that easily.’ Max leaned back against the cushions, the mug cradled to his chest, and propped his feet up on the table so he could poke the Scrabble box nearer to Neve. ‘Come on, set ’em up. Unless you’re too scared.’ ‘Max, I have all the two-letter words memorised, and as for Carol Vorderman – well, she might be good at maths but there was a reason why she wasn’t in Dictionary Corner on Countdown so I’m not surprised you beat her at Scrabble.’ ‘Fighting talk.’ Max rapped his knuckles gently against Neve’s head, which made her furious. ‘I’ll remind you of that little speech once I’m done making you eat every single one of those high-scoring words you seem to think you’re so good at.’ ‘Right, that does it.’ Neve snatched up the box and practically tore off the lid, so she could bang the board down on the coffee table. ‘You can’t be that good at Scrabble if you keep your letters in a crumpled paper bag,’ Max noted, actually daring to nudge her arm with his foot. Neve knew he was only doing it to get a rise out of her, but God, it was working. ‘Game on, Pancake Boy,’ she snarled, throwing a letter rack at Max, which just made him laugh. ‘And don’t think I’m going to let you win just because it’s your birthday.’ It was the most fun Neve had ever had playing Scrabble. It might even have been the most fun she had ever had. For every obscure word she tried to play in the highest scoring place, Max would put down three tiles to make three different words and block off huge sections of the board. Every time she tried to flounce or throw a strop because ‘you’re going against the whole spirit of the game’, Max would pop another Quality Street into her mouth because, as he said, ‘It is Treat Sunday and you only had one roast potato.’ When there were no more Quality Street left and they’d drunk all the champagne, he stopped each one of her snits with a slow, devastating kiss so there were long pauses between each round. It was a point of honour to Neve that she won in the most satisfying way possible; finally getting to use her ‘q’ on a triple word score by turning Max’s ‘hogs’ into ‘quahogs’ and waving the Oxford English Dictionary in his face when he dared to challenge her.

Kneeling down next to an article of clothing, Kevin looked up to see Christine a few feet away, gathering up one of her extravagant lolita dresses. Looking at her like this, the girl really did look cute, like a fragile porcelain doll. As he continued to watch her, his eyes landed on the black choker around her neck. “Isn’t that the choker that I bought you for your birthday a while back?” Kevin asked. Christine paused in her work. Her hand went to her choker. “A-ah, um, yes, it is. I… well, this is my… my favorite choker, so I like to wear it a lot…” Christine’s cheeks flushed once more, but she at least didn’t seem to be blowing her top. “After you, Iris, and Lilian left, I was really lonely. I hadn’t realized how important all of you were to me until you were gone. Ever since that day, ever since you three went off to Greece, I’ve taken to wearing this, because it reminded me of all the good times we’ve shared together.” That was probably the most honest thing he’d ever heard Christine say since she’d confessed her feelings for him. He’d noticed it before, but Christine really was a tsundere. She rarely ever told anyone what she was really thinking, and she covered up her embarrassment with bluster and violence. Moments like this were rare for her. He could count the number of times where she’d been honest with her feelings on one hand and still have fingers left over. “I’m sorry we left you like that,” Kevin apologized. Christine shook her head. “You don’t need to apologize. I know that you didn’t have much of a choice. Had you not left, then…” Then he, Lilian, and Iris would have put everyone in danger. Back then, Lilian had been targeted by the Shénshèng Clan. One of its members, a three-tailed kitsune named Fan had attacked them during Lindsay’s soccer game. Iris had nearly been killed and Kevin had destroyed an entire school building just to defeat Fan. Christine had been there when it happened, so she understood why they had to leave. “Thank you for being so understanding,” he said. Christine quickly turned her back to him. “T-there’s no need to thank me. We’re friends. I-I was only doing what any good friend would do.” Tsundere until the end, Kevin thought with an amused chuckle. “Then, Christine, I’m very glad that you’re my friend.” Christine squeaked. As she sputtered incoherently, Kevin finally grabbed the article that he’d been kneeling over. Blinking when he realized that it felt different than everything else that he’d picked up thus far, he held the article up to study it. “What is this…?” He trailed off. The object in his hands… was Christine’s panties. “Uh…” Kevin could hear his brain sizzling. “W-what are you doing, idiot!? Don’t stare at those!” Christine leapt at him, and Kevin, too shocked by the object in his hands to do anything, let her tackle him to the ground. The panties were thrown from his hands as his back slammed into the floor. Spots appeared in his vision, but they were soon replaced by Christine’s face, which hovered not two inches from his own. Their noses were almost touching. “C-Christine?” He felt his eyes widen as Christine’s face inched a little closer to his. This was bad. This was a very bad situation. Christine was straddling him, and he could feel her thighs touching him, and her body was pressed against him, and… and… Oh, no… Perhaps it was the result of him still being horny because Christine had interrupted him and Lilian while they were having sex, but Kevin felt his arousal skyrocket. Christine felt it, too, because her eyes went even wider and she looked down. He also looked down. Then he looked back up. Their eyes met. Christine’s face was the brightest blue that he’d ever seen. “I can explain this,” Kevin said calmly. “KYA!” The sound of Christine’s scream was followed by a loud slap.

They both laughed, and then Maude surprised herself by saying, "You've been a good friend, Brien, for longer than I can remember. You helped me get through the worst time of my life, and I never thanked you . . . not until now." She did not need to elaborate; he understood. Their memories were suddenly functioning as one, taking them back more than thirteen years. She had been twenty-five, and no longer able to resist her father's will, agreeing at last to wed Geoffrey of Anjou. On her betrothal journey from England to Normandy, the old king had entrusted her to the custody of his eldest son, Robert, and his foster son, Brien. They had carried out the king's charge, escorted Maude to Rouen for the plight troth, and the following year she and Geoffrey had been wed at Le Mans. "Why should you thank me? I did as the king bade, turned you over to Geoffrey of Anjou, when I ought to have hidden you away where he never could have found you." Maude was started. "You did what you could, Brien, you made me feel--without a word being said-- that you understood, that you were on my side. That may not sound like much, but it was." "If I had it to do over again . . ." His smile held no humor, just a disarming flash of self-mockery. "I suppose I'd do the same, however much I'd like to think I would not. But my regrets would be so much greater, knowing as I do now how miserable he'd make you. I never forgave your father for that, for forcing you to wed a man so unworthy of you--" He stopped abruptly, and a tense, strained silence followed, which neither of them seemed able to break. Maude was staring at Brien, a man she'd known all her life, and seeing a stranger. Had she lost her wits altogether? How could she have confided him him like this ? She'd long ago learned to keep her fears private, her pain secret, all others at a safe distance, yet here in a barren winter garden, she'd lowered her defenses, allowing Brien to get a glimpse into her very soul. Even worse, she'd seen into his soul, too, discovered what she ought never to have known. She felt suddenly as flustered as a raw, green girl, she who was a widow, wife, and a mother, a woman just a month shy of her thirty-ninth birthday, a woman who could be queen.

The worst kind of marriage is the one that aims for happiness. Don’t tell me that every marriage should have that grand aspiration. A marriage reaching for happiness is like any average Joe wanting to make a cake as tall as Mount Everest and as colorful as a tropical island. And on top of that, to make it edible. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But tell me how many people can afford that kind of happiness? We can make do with a sloppy cake as long as it doesn’t topple over. Cracked, fine. A bit dense, no problem. Oversweetened, we can live with that. Underbaked, it won’t kill you. Once I watched a movie in which a woman baked a birthday cake for her husband. And then she thought it was not perfect, and she dumped it into the trash can. Oh, I laughed so hard someone had to shush me in the theater. But people can be stubborn. I shouldn’t have laughed at the woman in the movie. Lucy wanted her life to turn out like that perfect cake. It did not, so she dumped it, along with everything else. Katherine, perhaps your marriage to Andy will still have some hope: if you both can learn to love a lopsided cake.

You know how some events turn out to be the big stepping-stones between one part of your life and the next? I don't just mean the steps you intend to take, like leaving home or starting a new job or marrying the person you love on a summer's afternoon. I mean the unexpected steps: the middle-of-the-night phone calls, the accidents, the risks that don't pay off. My twenty-third birthday turned out to be one of my unexpected stepping-stones; a step away from the solid foundations built by my indomitable parents toward quicksand where they are fragile and human and need me as much as I need them. It's knocked my world off-kilter; I'm sickly nervous every time the phone rings and there's a permanent cesspool of fear sloshing around in the base of my stomach. If I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say I feel hunted. I'm caught in the, waiting for the bullet that may or may not come, running, looking over my shoulder, braced for impact." -Laurie

As the next page loaded with another set of 25 emails, his eyes were drawn to the bottom of the screen, where for the first time previously-read messages stood out beneath the bold-type unread ones.  There was something powerfully sentimental, almost tangible, about the realization that his dad had sat before a computer somewhere ten years earlier and had clicked on these same messages.  The most recent one, received just hours before his parents’ death, was from his mom with the subject line, “re: Li’l Ryan’s Bday”. With a lump developing in his throat, he clicked on the message.  His mom had written: “That’s something dads should talk to their sons about ;)”  Hmm.  Didn’t make sense without context. Below the end of the message he found the option to “show quoted text,”  which he clicked on to reveal the entire exchange in reverse chronological order.  She had been responding to his dad’s message: “I’m sure he’ll get it.  I like the idea, but you better be prepared to have a discussion about the birds and bees.  You know how his mind works.  He’ll want to know how that baby got in there.” Ryan’s palms grew sweaty as he began to infer what was coming next.  Not entirely sure he wanted to continue, but certain he couldn’t stop, he scrolled to the end. The thread had started with his mother’s message, “I’m already showing big-time.  Sweaters only get so baggy, and it’s going to be warming up soon.  I think tonight would be the perfect time to tell Ryan.  I wrapped up a T-shirt for him in one of his presents that says ‘Big Brother’ on it.  A birthday surprise!  You think he’ll get it?” Having trouble taking in a deep breath, he rose to a stand and slowly backed away from his computer.  It wasn’t his nature to ask fate “Why?” or to dwell on whether or not something was “fair.”  But this was utterly overwhelming – a knife wound on top of an old scar that had never sufficiently healed. ~~~ Corbett Hermanson peered around the edge of Bradford’s half-open door and knocked gently on the frame.  Bradford was sitting at his desk, leafing through a thick binder.  He had to have heard the knock, Corbett thought, peeking in, but his attention to the material in the binder remained unbroken. Now regretting his timid first knock, Corbett anxiously debated whether he should knock again, which could be perceived as rude, or try something else to get Bradford’s attention.  Ultimately he decided to clear his throat loudly, while standing more prominently in the doorway. Still, Bradford kept his nose buried in the files in front of him. Finally, Corbett knocked more confidently on the door itself. “What!” Bradford demanded.  “If you’ve got something to say, just say it!” “Sorry, sir.  Wasn’t sure you heard me,” Corbett said, with a nervous chuckle. “Do you think I’m deaf and blind?” Bradford sneered.  “Just get on with it already.” “Well sir, I’m sure you recall our conversation a few days back about the potential unauthorized user in our system?  It turns out...” “Close the door!” Bradford whispered emphatically, waving his arms wildly for Corbett to stop talking and come all the way into his office. “Sorry, sir,” Corbett said, his cheeks glowing an orange-red hue to match his hair.  After self-consciously closing the door behind him, he picked up where he’d left off.  “It turns out, he’s quite good at keeping himself hidden.  I was right about his not being in Indiana, but behind that location, his IP address bounces

Left to our own devices in an empty, strange bedroom, we played a game with a rolled-up pair of socks. We would turn the lights out and then one of us would try to hit the other with the ball of socks. Each strike in the dark gained you a point. I won every time, but I still feel bad about it. For one of his birthdays Nick had been given a watch with a luminous dial. Wherever he tried to hide in the room I could always see him. It wasn’t until he turned fifty that I finally told him the truth. All those years later he was still furious. I don’t blame him. It was shameful of me.

Serch." Why did he always sound like the one who'd been left, who'd been denied? His fingers brushed Serch's forearm, though, and it damn near took him out. His belly pulled tight and heat crashed over his head like a fucking wave, rocking him and weakening his limbs. "Don't do this," German begged softly. "Gram is gone. It's just you and me now." He clasped Serch's shoulder. "I don't want to fight." All Serch had was the fight, otherwise, he'd be empty, hollowed out by the pain with no one to pass it off to. "Serch." German's whole fucking palm rested on Serch's face. It just sat there, warm and enticing. The best touch a beggar like him could ever hope to have. "I love you." His soul shook. His heart broke all over again. Serch spun away from him, giving German his back as he leaned against the doorframe, head bowed. "Please." That shaky voice sounded close, too close to Serch. "Please." "Fuck your love." Serch faced him with a snarl, chest heaving as he gave up on attempting to control himself. "You love me, German? You kiss me and tell me you want me, and then the instant I turn my back you move across the fucking country with somebody else. You love me? You stay away for years and only speak to me once, once--" He held up a finger. "On the phone." His brother's mouth opened and closed, but Serch refused to let him talk. "I've had birthdays without you. I've taken care of Gram without you. I had to watch her die..." His voice disappeared then, and he had to swallow and swallow before finishing. "Without you." "I'm sorry." "Don't tell me that shit!" Serch exploded. "Tell me how I can stop wanting you, because I do. Tell me how I can stop feeling your body against mine, because I do. Your cries, your taste. I still get off on them." He grabbed the front of his own t-shirt, fisting it, tugging on it. "Tell me how to stop missing you, because I've been lonely since the day you left. And I'm alone now, even with your breath incinerating my skin." "I miss you, too." Fuck! Somebody moved. Somebody must have moved because they were on each other, the press of their bodies so fucking good Serch's eyes watered. German was in his embrace, arms at his nape, fingers gripping his hair. Parted lips on his.

A woman’s voice came wailing on the wind. Norman looked up and spotted Sandra high up on an even steeper funnel of snow and ice. She was crying: ‘Your father is dead. What are we going to do?’ One of her shoulders was hanging weirdly. There was a bloody wound on her forehead, matted with hair. Then he saw his dad, still in his seat but slumped awkwardly forward. Norman turned around on the steep slope and inched over towards him, sneakers pathetically trying to hold an edge. He slipped and almost plummeted like a bobsleigh down the mountain. He caught a hold. Then he started crawling back up. It took him thirty minutes to climb 6 m (20 ft). His dad was doubled over. ‘DAD!’ No response. Snow was falling on his father’s curly hair. Above him, Sandra sounded delirious. By the time he was four, Norman had skied every black run at Mammoth. On his first birthday, his dad had him strapped to his back in a canvas papoose and took him surfing. Reckless, perhaps, but it had given the boy an indomitable spirit. Eleven-year-old Norman hugged his dad for the last time then tracked back across the slope to see what he could salvage from the wreckage. There were no ice axes or tools, but he did find a rug. He took it and scrabbled back to Sandra. She couldn’t move. Somehow he got her under the ragged remains of the plane’s wing and they wrapped themselves in the rug and fell into an exhausted sleep. Norman was woken around noon by a helicopter. He leapt up, trying to catch the crew’s attention. They came very, very close but somehow didn’t see him. They were going to have to get off this mountain themselves. A brief lull in the storm gave them a sudden view. The slope continued beneath their feet, sickeningly sheer, for hundreds of feet. Then lower down there were woods and the gully levelled a little before a massive ridgeline rose again. Beyond that lay a flatter meadow of snow and, at the edge of the world, a cabin. Sandra wanted to stay put. She was ranting about waiting for the rescuers. For a moment Norman nearly lay down beside her and drifted off to sleep. The

For some crazy reason, he believed in her, and that was extraordinary. No one had ever believed in her before. Not her mother, who used to call her worthless every time she tried to help around the house and worse than worthless if she didn’t try to help. Not her father, who had informed her on her sixth birthday that she shouldn’t have been born, before he walked out the door never to come back. Not her sisters, who stole her clothes whenever she didn’t hide them. Not her older brother, who used to hit her but only in places it wouldn’t show. Not her teacher, who’d called her a liar when she’d tried to say she felt spirits. Oh, how she’d loved the day he had been proved wrong! She’d loved the moment when it was her turn to walk out that door!

James settled down to the film. He got a shock when he noticed Nicole and Junior had their arms around each other and an even bigger one a minute later when they started snogging. They were all over each other. Nicole’s leg was up in the air and James kept getting kicked. He got up and moved down two seats so he was sitting on the opposite side of April, away from any flailing limbs. “They’re getting on well,” April grinned. She grinned for a long time. James watched half a minute of the film and she was still grinning at him. He realized the girls had planned an ambush. Nicole already knew Junior fancied her because he’d asked her out before. James felt like he’d been hooked on a line and reeled in, but he checked April out and realized that as traps go, it wasn’t a bad one. April was decent-looking, with long brown hair and fit legs. James slid his hand under the armrest and put it on top of April’s. She twisted in her seat, so she could rest her head on James’s shoulder. James turned around, breathed April’s smell and kissed her on the cheek while she grabbed a few of his Maltesers. They stayed that way for a couple of minutes, until April moved away and blew chocolate breath over him. “So,” she whispered. “Are you gonna snog me or what?” James figured, “What the hell, it’s my birthday.” They snogged for ten minutes, breaking up when the movie got near the end and turned into a big car chase and punch-up that was actually worth watching.

This wasn’t a lie. Cheng Xin really had been found. Her mother had never married, but one night, while on a date with her boyfriend at the time, she saw a three-month-old baby abandoned on a park bench, along with a bottle of milk, a thousand yuan, and a slip of paper with the baby girl’s birthday. Her mother and the boyfriend had intended to bring the baby to the police, who would have turned the baby over to the city’s civil affairs department, who would have sent her to an orphanage. Instead, her mother decided that she wanted to bring the baby home and go to the police in the morning. Perhaps it was the experience of being a mother for a night, or some other reason, but the next morning, she found that she couldn’t send the child away. Every time she thought of parting from the young life, her heart ached, and so she decided to become the child’s mother. The boyfriend left her because of this. During the following decade, she dated four or five other men, but all of them ended up leaving her because of Cheng Xin. Later, Cheng Xin found out that none of the men had explicitly objected to her mother’s decision to keep her, but if any of them ever showed a trace of impatience or lack of understanding, her mother broke up with him. She refused to let any harm come to Cheng Xin.

Dr. Stamler said as much about the Mediterranean diet on the occasion of his hundredth birthday.2483 The centenarian remained committed to his pioneering research2484 even after turning one hundred. We lost him on January 26, 2022, at the age of 102.2485

TAKE ONE STORY, viewed from two different angles. Take a rainy Sunday morning in July, in the late 1920s, when Eddie and his friends are tossing a baseball Eddie got for his birthday nearly a year ago. Take a moment when that ball flies over Eddie’s head and out into the street. Eddie, wearing tawny pants and a wool cap, chases after it, and runs in front of an automobile, a Ford Model A. The car screeches, veers, and just misses him. He shivers, exhales, gets the ball, and races back to his friends. The game soon ends and the children run to the arcade to play the Erie Digger machine, with its claw-like mechanism that picks up small toys. Now take that same story from a different angle. A man is behind the wheel of a Ford Model A, which he has borrowed from a friend to practice his driving. The road is wet from the morning rain. Suddenly, a baseball bounces across the street, and a boy comes racing after it. The driver slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel. The car skids, the tires screech. The man somehow regains control, and the Model A rolls on. The child has disappeared in the rearview mirror, but the man’s body is still affected, thinking of how close he came to tragedy. The jolt of adrenaline has forced his heart to pump furiously and this heart is not a strong one and the pumping leaves him drained. The man feels dizzy and his head drops momentarily. His automobile nearly collides with another. The second driver honks, the man veers again, spinning the wheel, pushing on the brake pedal. He skids along an avenue then turns down an alley. His vehicle rolls until it collides with the rear of a parked truck. There is a small crashing noise. The headlights shatter. The impact smacks the man into the steering wheel. His forehead bleeds. He steps from the Model A, sees the damage, then collapses onto the wet pavement. His arm throbs. His chest hurts. It is Sunday morning. The alley is empty. He remains there, unnoticed, slumped against the side of the car. The blood from his coronary arteries no longer flows to his heart. An hour passes. A policeman finds him. A medical examiner pronounces him dead. The cause of death is listed as “heart attack.” There are no known relatives. Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue, where one worker calls another worker over to marvel at the blue skin of the newest arrival.

In the middle of the tournament I turn eighteen. The tournament director rolls a cake out to center court, and everyone sings. I’ve never liked birthdays. No one ever took note of my birthday when I was growing up. But this feels different. I’m legal, everyone keeps saying. In the eyes of the law, you’re a grown-up. Then the law is an ass.

The renewal of their friendship was signalled by the fact that Einstein let Bohr use his office. One day Bohr was dictating a draft of a paper in honour of Einstein’s 70th birthday to Pais. Stuck on what to say next, Bohr stood looking out of the window, every now and then muttering Einstein’s name aloud. At that moment Einstein tiptoed into the office. His doctor had banned him from buying any tobacco, but had said nothing about stealing it. Pais later recounted what happened next: ‘Always on tiptoes, he made a beeline for Bohr’s tobacco pot, which stood on the table at which I was sitting. Bohr, unaware, was standing at the window, muttering, “Einstein…Einstein…” I was at a loss what to do, especially because I had at that moment not the faintest idea of what Einstein was up to. Then Bohr, with a firm “Einstein”, turned around. There they were, face to face, as if Bohr had summoned him forth. It is an understatement to say that for a moment Bohr was speechless. I myself, who had seen it coming, had distinctly felt uncanny for a moment, so I could well understand Bohr’s own reaction. A moment later the spell was broken when Einstein explained his mission. Soon we were all bursting with laughter.

Liam wasn't really one for wishes, but if he were...If he were he wouldn't want to wish on birthday candles, or shooting stars, or airplanes parading as something magical. He'd wish on a castle and a flash of purple and a smile that made his stomach turn in all the best ways.

Fair enough,” Miss Olyer said, handing the knife over to Ten. “Which one of you wants to do the honor?” “While I appreciate you including me,” Mina drawled wryly, “I don’t think any sort of knife wielding is in my future. And I am saying that as a Maiden.” “I can do it,” Ten offered, taking the knife. “Shall we all sing the song?” “Song? What song?!” But no one answered her question because they all burst into the traditional birthday party song, most of them off key and entirely too enthused by the process. Mina’s head kept turning in every direction, trying to catch up with it. It wasn’t a lengthy song, maybe a minute or so, but Ten was perfectly proud of how they all somehow finished on a slightly different note. “Is… Is this a punishment?” Mina asked when they all finished their howling, er, singing. “It’s a little bit of sour to make the cake that much sweeter,” Miss Olyer said with a chuckle. “Now finally, it’s time!

That didn’t stop you with Liam,” he says under his breath, and I have to force myself to not kick him in the shin. Even though…he’s not wrong. Liam North got custody of me when I was twelve. His guardianship ended two weeks ago, when I turned nineteen and left his home. I’m not empty-handed. I have the incredible Stradivarius violin he gave me for my birthday on one hand. And I have his brother, Joshua North, who’s going to be my bodyguard after a suspicious accident at home.

AM: My father had arrived in New York all alone, from the middle of Poland, before his seventh birthday… He arrived in New York, his parents were too busy to pick him up at Castle Garden and sent his next eldest brother Abe, going on 10, to find him, get him through immigration and bring him home to Stanton Street and the tenement where in two rooms the eight of them lived and worked, sewing the great long, many-buttoned cloaks that were the fashion then. They sent him to school for about six months, figuring he had enough. He never learned how to spell, he never learned how to figure. Then he went right back into the shop. By the time he was 12 he was employing two other boys to sew sleeves on coats alongside him in some basement workshop. KM: He went on the road when he was about 16 I think… selling clothes at a wholesale level. AM: He ended up being the support of the entire family because he started the business in 1921 or something. The Miltex Coat Company, which turned out to be one of the largest manufacturers in this country. See we lived in Manhattan then, on 110th Street facing the Park. It was beautiful apartment up on the sixth floor. KM: We had a chauffeur driven car. The family was wealthy. AM: It was the twenties and I remember our mother and father going to a show every weekend. And coming back Sunday morning and she would be playing the sheet music of the musicals. JM: It was an arranged marriage. But a woman of her ability to be married off to a man who couldn’t read or write… I think Gussie taught him how to read and to sign his name. AM: She knew she was being wasted, I think. But she respected him a lot. And that made up for a little. Until he really crashed, economically. And then she got angry with him. First the chauffeur was let go, then the summer bungalow was discarded, the last of her jewellery had to be pawned or sold. And then another step down - the move to Brooklyn. Not just in the case of my father but every boy I knew. I used to pal around with half a dozen guys and all their fathers were simply blown out of the water. I could not avoid awareness of my mother’s anger at this waning of his powers. A certain sneering contempt for him that filtered through her voice. RM: So how did the way you saw your father change when he lost his money? AM: Terrible… pity for him. Because so much of his authority sprang from the fact that he was a very successful businessman. And he always knew what he as doing. And suddenly: nothin’. He didn’t know where he was. It was absolutely not his fault, it was the Great Crash of the ‘29, ‘30, ‘31 period. So from that I always, I think, contracted the idea that we’re very deeply immersed in political and economic life of the country, of the world. And that these forces end up in the bedroom and they end up in the father and son and father and daughter arrangements. In Death of a Salesman what I was interested in there was what his world and what his life had left him with. What that had done to him? Y’know a guy can’t make a living, he loses his dignity. He loses his male force. And so you tend to make up for it by telling him he's OK anyway. Or else you turn your back on him and leave. All of which helps create integrated plays, incidentally. Where you begin to look: well, its a personality here but what part is being played by impersonal forces?

or trepidation, like they wanted to run away as fast as they could once the photo was taken. But Manfred Lange appeared happy to be photographed. His occupation was listed as art historian, and his date of birth as 29 June 1871. All consistent with what Anna knew about him. She flipped the little cardboard folder of his work permit over. Underneath was a membership card to the NSDAP, the Nazi Party. Again, his unapologetic face stared out at her. Member number 149578. So he had been a party member. Anna twinged a little. Had he told her he had been a party member? People with important jobs usually had to be, and it didn’t necessarily mean they were true believers, or even sympathizers. Still, it bothered her. She scanned the room trying not to appear furtive but failing. She quickly flipped pages to see if she could find his Fragebogen, the questionnaire the Americans would have made him complete. But it wasn’t there, of course, because these were the Germans’ files, not the Americans’. Deeply uncomfortable, she flipped back to the party membership card. The date of issue was 20 April 1933. Hitler’s birthday. Manfred Lange had been what the Germans called a March Violet—a late bloomer. March Violets were those who joined the party right after Hitler had seized full authority in March of 1933. Many with elite jobs and who considered themselves to have standing in society, rushed to join the party in order to be on the right side of the power grab. Probably that’s what Manfred Lange had done, too, like millions of others. She closed the folder indicating she was ready to go. She wanted to be out of the building and far away. “Find anything we should know about?” Bender asked, as he held the door for her. “No,” she lied. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat. The air had turned colder and the sky was socked in with dense clouds. “Looks like we’re in the clear for now. At least with the folks working for us.” He shot her a look. “Should you have let me see Herr Lange’s information?” Anna retaliated to deflect any further line of questioning. He smiled as he started the engine. “Probably not,” he said, “but I can’t help it. I’m so nosy.” Six “Where were you? I couldn’t find you at all yesterday.” Cooper was flustered and irritated but a smile appeared when Anna looked up at him from her desk. Things had piled up while she was out with Bender, so she had come in early to catch up. Anna honestly couldn’t remember if Manfred Lange had mentioned being a party member; she could only recall that he was very against the Nazis’ attitude toward art and free speech to the point where the memories had upset him. She hated that these misgivings lived on and probably would forever. One day, Amalia would ask her what she had done in the war. “I went with Bender to Darmstadt. I thought you knew about that,” she said. “He told me he had checked with you.” “That’s right. Of course. Was it a successful trip?” He sat down in the chair next to her table, intent on something. “I think so. He asked me to help him translate some paperwork. He was checking on some personnel? I didn’t find anything.” “Sounds like good news. For us, anyway. We already had to fire some people when their past caught up with them.” “Because they were party members?” “Or worse. Makes sense, but we had to let some very qualified people go. And with all these government types breathing down our necks, we can’t afford a single screw up. Washington is just waiting for something to go wrong so they can scrap this whole operation.” His face sank back into the shadows it had carried for the past weeks. He leaned forward and dropped his face into his hands. Anna felt sorry for him. “That won’t happen,” she said. “You will make sure of it.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. Without looking at her, Cooper took her hand in his and held it in place, his

You remember how awful middle school was, right? You feel so out of place- like something's wrong with you and any second everyone else is gonna figure it out. You see if happen from other people. Kids you used to play four square with suddenly getting mean nicknames, not getting invited to birthday parties. And you know you could be next, so you turn into a little asshole. If you point at other people, no one will look too closely at you, right? I was your asshole- I mean, I was the asshole in your life, for a while.

Sometimes the road of life will take you to a place you had planned...Sometimes it will show you a surprise around the bend you could never have anticipated. You must make decisions based on the information you have...accept the ups and downs as they come...and live "one day at a time." Often you will find it is only when you look back that you can see that what you had thought was a "wrong turn" has brought you to exactly the right place and that every step was the right one after all!

You're No Good" (feat. Santigold, Vybz Kartel, Danielle Haim & Yasmin) [Intro] You’re no good for me But the way you movin at me, oh it might be You want a Jamaican one [Verse] She say she love me and I’m nice Nothing after he return, nothing at the night She say it’s loving, make this down No time at all, she don’t wanna line She touch me, it all become nice She love me, for the rest of her life D drop it down, round kiss on mi spine Touch and make a sweet song, on top of all things My uh uh uh uh uh My ee ee ee ee ee My uh uh uh uh uh (my baby) My ee ee ee ee ee [Chorus] My aa aa aa aa me My melodea My L L L LSD I know you’ll come back around My aa aa aa aa me My melodea My L L L LSD You want a Jamaican one I know you’ll come back around [Verse] If I had you back I’ll never let you go another way Not for the life of me How could you imagine that? Well my mistake that send you on your way Well nothing I can say To you like drops of water Don’t ask me what went wrong Can’t turn back the damage I’ve done Can’t take em back after I’m gone A fool to keep on trying Can’t make me walk away ‘Cause baby I’m back and as I’m getting strung that you’ll be back one day [Chorus] [Verse] Girl you think you love me baby And you know so mi love is for my lady Deserve no faith to deserve no Slim Shady Go Shawty, it’s yo birthday No if and no maybe Take and attack it, you’re the thing, ordinary Me as boyfriend, girl come on and come save me Me and you’re tinking me, com e with me Surely inside the long shorty Til it wind, pan the flow and wind, pan the flow And if you want to get girls that do me Come here, lick it more, lick it more Mean everything, as I me love you So no one kill how I ever want Any time, get chug upon the doorway Man rest assured, pan the girl next door Oh yes I did did My uh uh uh uh uh My melodea My ee ee ee ee ee I know you’ll come back around My uh uh uh uh uh My melodea My ee ee ee ee ee I know you’ll come back around now You’re no good for me But the way you movin at me, oh it might be No one ever made me feel so sweet Now you got me begging on my knees Baby get it for me It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely [x2] It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely [Chorus x2] My aa aa aa aa me

Recoiling backwards from the horror, his flight catapulted him headlong over the rail of the balcony. His piercing scream drowned out the uproarious Happy Birthday greeting from his wife, friends, and neighbors flooding into the hallway and the living room to begin the celebration. In midair, when someone turned on the lights in the dining room, Gary saw the monster from the master bedroom pulling off her rubber mask and looking down at him from the railing with sad eyes. It was Janine, his next-door neighbor. In the seconds before Gary lost consciousness after breaking his neck on the ceramic tile floor, he saw the entire room fill with balloons and confetti. Gwen looked ravishing in her favorite cocktail dress blowing a noisemaker and tossing a streamer into the air. A huge banner with the words, “Happy Halloween, Gary on Your 40th Birthday… A Night To Remember” was the last thing he saw before the grim reaper gobbled him up. Gwen had done it again. She had planned a truly memorable party that no one in attendance would ever forget. Gary died on the same day he was born, October 31.

My baby is four years old. I know that calling her a baby is really only a matter of semantics now. It’s true, she still sucks her thumb; I have a hard time discouraging this habit. John and I are finally confident that we already enjoy our full complement of children, so the crib is in the crawlspace, awaiting nieces, nephews, or future grandchildren. I cried when I took it down, removing the screws so slowly and feeling the maple pieces come apart in my hands. Before I dismantled it, I spent long vigils lingering in Annie’s darkened room, just watching her sleep, the length of her curled up small. What seems like permanence, the tide of daily life coming in and going out, over and over, is actually quite finite. It is hard to grasp this thought even as I ride the wave of this moment, but I will try. This time of tucking into bed and wiping up spilled milk is a brief interlude. Quick math proves it. Let me take eleven years - my oldest girl’s age - as an arbitrary endpoint to mothering as I know it now. Mary, for instance, reads her own stories. To her already I am becoming somewhat obsolete. That leaves me roughly 2.373 days, the six and half years until Annie’s eleventh birthday, to do this job. Now that is a big number, but not nearly as big as forever, which is how the current moment often seems. So I tuck Annie in every night. I check on Peter and Tommy, touch their crew-cut heads as they dream in their Star Wars pajamas, my twin boys who still need me. I steal into Mary’s room, awash with pink roses, and turn out the light she has left on, her fingers still curled around the pages of her book. She sleeps in the bed that was mine when I was a child. Who will she grow up to be? Who will I grow up to be? I think to myself, Be careful what you wish for. The solitude I have lost, the time and space I wish for myself, will come soon enough. I don’t want to be surprised by its return. Old English may be a dead language, but scholars still manage to find meaning and poetry in its fragments. And it is no small consolation that my lost letters still manage, after a thousand years, to find their way to an essay like this one. They have become part of my story, one I have only begun to write. - Essay 'Mother Tongue' from Brain, Child Magazine, Winter 2009

It was not by accident that Miles’s thirtieth birthday came up the week following, while he lingered in quiet ennui by the lakeside. It was the best place to ignore the event, unlike the capital where he was likely to be plagued with acquaintances and relatives, or at least Ivan, ragging him on the topic, or worse, inflicting a party on him. Though Ivan would doubtless be restrained by the knowledge that his turn would be next, in a couple of months. Anyway, Miles would really only be one day older, just like any other day. Right? The

At the sight of the dozen assorted cupcakes, as bright and optimistic as party hats, Louise's eyes lit up. "How wonderful!" she said, clapping her hands together again. I handed her one of the red velvet cupcakes that I'd made in the old-fashioned style, using beets instead of food coloring. I'd had to scrub my fingers raw for twenty minutes to get the crimson beet stain off them, but the result was worth it: a rich chocolate cake cut with a lighter, nearly unidentifiable, earthy sweetness, and topped with cream cheese icing and a feathery cap of coconut shavings. For Ogden, I selected a Moroccan vanilla bean and pumpkin spice cupcake that I'd been developing with Halloween in mind. It was not for the faint of heart, and I saw the exact moment in Ogden's eyes that the dash of heat- courtesy of a healthy pinch of cayenne- hit his tongue, and the moment a split-second later that the sugary vanilla swept away the heat, like salve on a wound. "Oh," he said, after swallowing. He looked at me, and I could see it was his turn to be at a loss for words. I smiled. Louise, on the other hand, was half giggling, half moaning her way through a second cupcake, this time a lemonade pound cake with a layer of hot pink Swiss meringue buttercream icing curling into countless tiny waves as festive and feminine as a little girl's birthday tiara. "Exquisite!" she said, mouth full. And then, shrugging in her son's direction, her eyes twinkling. "What? I didn't eat lunch.

I deserve this shrimp. Born to people who clearly shouldn't have reproduced, I date my best friend and turn him gay, date another man who doesn't know he's gay, almost have dinner with a third man who's more interested in his reflection than me, and land on a yeti who turns out to be a millionaire playboy. "I lost the man I thought of as a father, had my thirtieth birthday party minus any family, and now I'm being dissed in the gossip rags. I am only human and I can take no more, so, yes, I have consumed my body weight in wine and I plan on eating this whole goddamn plate of shrimp.

How much does this thing cost?” Travis says, walking closer to it. Honestly, Travis is always like this. A negative nelly is what my mother would call him. He always has to ask the questions that nobody wants to answer because it ruins all the fun. “Well, that’s a hard question. Are you talking about the rental price or the price of all the smiles on everyone’s faces as they are having the time of their lives?” “The rental price.” “Well, here’s the thing−” I start, but he holds his hand up and looks to Tina. “$1599.00 plus deposit and taxes,” she says. “WHAT?” Travis exclaims. “No way! Forget it. This is a veto.” “You can’t use a veto for this!” I argue. “Well, I just did,” he says, shrugging. I can see he has already put the idea out of his mind, which is completely ridiculous. I mean, I know it is pretty expensive, but then I think of all the fun memories everyone will make together− and can you really put a price on that? “Travis, you’re not seeing the bigger picture here!” I argue. “We said a small party. A couple of friends, some food and wine. This,” he says, pointing to the obstacle course, “is not small.” “Who wants small for a thirtieth birthday party? I mean, you only turn thirty once−” From the look on Travis’ face I decide to switch tactics. “What about if we charge people?” “You’re crazy,” he says. “Not our guests, but the neighbours and stuff. Kind of like a carnival.” Actually, I just thought of that idea right here and now, but it’s not a bad one. Plus, it might be easier to have the neighbours agree to have it on the street if I let them join in the fun. “Or we could just stick to the regular plan,” Travis says and turns to Tina. “I’m sorry we wasted your time.” I already know the next part of this conversation is not going to go well. “I kind of already put the deposit down,” I say, trying to get an imaginary piece of dirt off my sweater. No one says anything and I am starting to feel pretty sorry for Tina because she looks beyond uncomfortable with the conversation. “What kind of deposit?” Travis says in a low tone. “The non-refundable kind,” I say, biting my lip. “How much was the deposit?” he asks, looking from me to Tina. Tina’s eyes are wide and she looks to me desperately, asking me to rescue her from this awkwardness. Honestly, if anyone needs a life jacket right now− it’s me. “Nimfy perfin,” I mumble. “What?” “Ninety percent,” I say, meeting his eyes. “The remaining ten percent is due on delivery.” “You really are crazy,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you are getting all worked up about,” I say. “I’m paying for it!” “Etty, this… thing… is your rent for the month!” “I’ll take extra shifts,” I say, shrugging. “I wanted to make sure Scott’s day was really special.” “It’s going to be special because he’s with his friends and family. You don’t need to do these things.” “Yes, I do!” I say. “It’s how I show people that I care about them.” “Write them a nice card,” Travis says slowly. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You’re always the storm cloud that rains on my parade!” “No, I’m the voice of reason in a land of eternal sunshine and daisies,” he says, and turns to Tina. “Is there any way we can get her deposit back?” Tina is now fidgeting with her skirt. “No, I’m sorry, but−” “Don’t worry Tina, I don’t want my deposit back. What I want is my brother to have the best day ever with his friends and family on a hundred foot inflatable obstacle course,” I narrow my eyes at Travis while lifting my purse further up my shoulder. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go and start my first of twenty overtime shifts to pay for the best day of all of our lives.

When I was a child and I would listen to my sister's LPs She was a huge fan and she was so in love with him that she wrote him a letter. I enjoyed seeing my sis so happy about Manilow Mania. I wrote some lyrics based on one of his songs, also thinking of those ships that pass in the night in the city where I was born. Can you guess which one? Anyway, my sister was already unconscious at the hospital when I inserted an earplug so that she could hear some of his songs. It was very low, very mild Manilow, when all of a sudden, in the second cord when he sang "I made it through the rain" in a beat a bit higher her heartbeat which was being monitored played faster. I could see that as a sign that she was listening. I stopped the song and I started Singing one of her songs that she had especially made for my birthday when I turned nine yrs old and I never forgot about that. I could see a little smile coming from the left side of her lips. It was the affirmation I needed. That she was and will always be there for me as I so admired her soul to the bones!

So here’s the dealio; I was trying to think of what I could get for your birthday that would mean something, not just the usual Barbie crap. And I was thinking—you and me are Indian. Your mom’s not, but we are. And I’ve always liked Indian symbols. Know what a symbol is?” She shook her head. “Shit that stands for shit. So let’s see if I remember this right.” Sitting on the bed, he plucked the bird card out of her hand, turning it around in his fingers. “Okay, this guy is magic. He’ll protect you from bad spells and other kinds of weirdness you might not even be aware of.” Carefully he unwound the wire ties that attached the small charm to its plastic card and placed the bird on her bedside table. Then he picked up the teddy bear. “This fierce animal is a protector.” She laughed. “No, really. It may not look like it, but appearances can be deceiving. This dude is a fearless spirit. And with that fearless spirit, he signals bravery to those who require it.” He freed the bear from the card and set it on the table next to the bird. “All right. Now the fish. This one might be the best of all. It gives you the power to resist other people’s magic. How cool is that?” She thought

Alric looked at Reuben. “Is he telling the truth? I can have him ripped apart by dogs, you know. I love dogs. We use them to hunt, but they aren’t allowed to actually take down or eat their quarry. Always thought that was a shame, you know? I think they would appreciate the opportunity. It could be fun too. We could just let these fools run and bet on how far they can get before the dogs catch them.” “I bet Horace doesn’t make it to the gate,” Mauvin said; then all heads turned to Reuben. Ellison looked at him, too, his face frozen in a tense, wide-eyed stare. “I wasn’t aware of any threat from Squire Ellison, Your Highness,” Reuben replied. “Are you sure?” Alric pressed, and flicked a small yellow leaf off Ellison’s shoulder. “We don’t have to use the dogs.” He smiled and tilted his head toward the Pickerings. “They’d love to teach them a lesson, you know. In a way they’re a lot like hunting dogs—they never get the chance to kill anyone either. Ever since they reached their tenth birthday, no one has been stupid enough to challenge them.” “I was, Your Highness,” Reuben said. That got a laugh from the Pickerings and the prince, although Reuben didn’t know why. “Yes, you did, didn’t you?” “That’s why you’re our friend,” Mauvin explained. “He didn’t know who we were,” Fanen pointed out. “He had no idea about the skill of a Pickering blade.” “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Reuben said. His blood was still up from the fight, and his mouth ran away with him. “If I thought you were there to harm the princess, I would still have fought you.” A moment of silence followed this and Reuben watched as Alric smiled; then he glanced at Mauvin and they laughed again. “Tell me, Hilfred, how are you at catching frogs?

Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart. Take time today to find at least one thing to be grateful for. – HAPPY BIRTHDAY

She fell asleep within minutes, unaware that the rain that had been falling since evening had turned to sleet, or that the roads were becoming impassable. As she slept, she began to dream, but instead of a continuous scene, it consisted of images flashing through her mind, like looking at old pictures in an album. Cat was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mother was standing beside her, laughing as she set a birthday cake in front of her. There were four candles on her cake, and her daddy was taking a picture. “Smile,” he’d said. She looked up just as the flash went off. She was still blinking from the flash when the image shifted. It was cold. The blowing wind burned her skin. She was at a cemetery, staring down at a small, flat marker. Cat couldn’t read, but somehow she knew it bore hermother’s name. She could hear her father crying. It scared her worse than the fact that her mother had gone away. “Daddy…where did she go?” “Heaven.” “Is it far?” “Yes.” “Can we go, too?” She never heard his answer, because the image shifted again. This time, she was being led through a long series of hallways. The smell of orange oil from wood polish burned her nose. The sound of her footsteps echoed on the tiled floors. Yesterday she’d been in the hospital. She’d asked to go home. But someone had told her she couldn’t go home because there was no one left to take care of her. The horror of that knowledge had frightened her so much that she’d been afraid to ask what came next. She walked through an open door as a woman said her name. The woman took her by the hand, and they walked away. She couldn’t see the woman’s face. She never remembered the faces, and it didn’t matter, because they never stayed the same.

his…demands?” And then she had held her breath as if seriously expecting Isabel to answer. And last night as Isabel passed a half-open bedroom door, she had overheard a fellow guest speaking to her maid. “I do so admire Lady Isabel for not feeling the need to bow to the demands of fashion,” the woman had said. “She dresses instead in what is comfortable even if it is not in the first stare. Though I find it no wonder her husband has strayed.” Isabel had gritted her teeth and gone on down to dinner, where she smiled and flirted and silently dared anyone to comment to her face that her dress was at least two years old. If only her early departure wouldn’t cause so much comment, she would call for her carriage and go home right now. But that was impossible. For one thing, she didn’t have a carriage, for she had come up from London with a fellow guest. Too short of funds to afford a post-chaise, she was equally dependent on her friend for transport back to the city when the hunting party broke up. And secondly, of course, there were only two places she could go—Maxton Abbey, or the London house—and her husband might be at either one. Unless, with her safely stashed at the Beckhams’, he had accepted yet another of the many invitations he received. But she couldn’t take the chance. After little more than a year of marriage, the pattern was ingrained—wherever one of the Maxwells went, the other took pains not to go. She could not burst in on her husband; what if he were entertaining his mistress? Better not to know. She might go to the village of Barton Bristow, descending on her sister. But Emily’s tiny cottage was scarcely large enough for her and her companion, with no room for a guest—and Mrs. Dalrymple’s constant chatter and menial deference was enough to set Isabel’s teeth on edge. In fact, the only nice thing Isabel could say about being married was that at least she wasn’t required to drag a spinster companion around the countryside with her to preserve her reputation, as Emily had to do. Isabel turned her borrowed mount over to the stable boys and strode across to the house, where the butler intercepted her in the front hall. “A letter has just been delivered for you, Lady Isabel, by a special messenger. He said a post-chaise will call for you tomorrow.” She took the folded sheet with trepidation. Who could be summoning her? Not her husband, that was certain. Her father, possibly, for yet another lecture on the duties of a young wife? She broke the seal and unfolded the page. My dearest Isabel, You will remember from happier days that I will soon celebrate my seventieth birthday… Uncle Josiah. But her moment of relief soon

WATERMELON COOKIES Preheat oven to 325 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 1 package (.16-ounce) watermelon (or any other flavor) Kool-Aid powder (Don’t get the kind with sugar or sugar substitute added.) 1 and ⅔ cup white (granulated) sugar 1 and ½ cups softened butter (2 and ½ sticks, 10 ounces) 2 large eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 3 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ½ cup white (granulated) sugar in a bowl Hannah’s 1st Note: When Brandi makes these cookies, she rolls them out on a floured board and uses cookie cutters. Rolled cookies take more time than other types of cookies, so Lisa and I modified Brandi’s recipe for use at The Cookie Jar. Mix the watermelon Kool-Aid with the granulated sugar. Add the softened butter and mix until it’s nice and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix well. Mix in the salt and the baking soda. Make sure they’re well incorporated. Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing after each addition. Spray cookie sheets with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. You can also use parchment paper if you prefer. Roll dough balls one inch in diameter with your hands. (We use a 2-teaspoon cookie scooper at The Cookie Jar.) Roll the cookie balls in the bowl of white sugar and place them on the cookie sheet, 12 to a standard-size sheet. Bake the Watermelon Cookies at 325 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes (mine took 11 minutes) or until they’re just beginning to turn golden around the edges. Don’t overbake. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for no more than a minute, and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. Yield: Approximately 6 dozen pretty and unusual cookies that kids will adore, especially if you tell them that they’re made with Kool-Aid. Hannah’s 2nd Note: Brandi’s mother baked these cookies to send to school on birthdays. She

Life expectancy rose only modestly between the Neolithic era of 8500 to 3500 BC and the Victorian era of 1850 to 1900.13 An American born in the late nineteenth century had an average life expectancy of around forty-five years, with a large share never making it past their first birthdays.14 Then something remarkable happened. In countries on the frontier of economic development, human health began to improve rapidly, education levels shot up, and standards of living began to grow and grow. Within a century, life expectancies had increased by two-thirds, average years of schooling had gone from single to double digits, and the productivity of workers and the pay they took home had doubled and doubled and then doubled again. With the United States leading the way, the rich world crossed a Great Divide—a divide separating centuries of slow growth, poor health, and anemic technical progress from one of hitherto undreamed-of material comfort and seemingly limitless economic potential. For the first time, rich countries experienced economic development that was both broad and deep, reaching all major segments of society and producing not just greater material comfort but also fundamental transformations in the health and life horizons of those it touched. As the French economist Thomas Piketty points out in his magisterial study of inequality, “It was not until the twentieth century that economic growth became a tangible, unmistakable reality for everyone.”15 The mixed economy was at the heart of this success—in the United States no less than in other Western nations. Capitalism played an essential role. But capitalism was not the new entrant on the economic stage. Effective governance was. Public health measures made cities engines of innovation rather than incubators of illness.16 The meteoric expansion of public education increased not only individual opportunity but also the economic potential of entire societies. Investments in science, higher education, and defense spearheaded breakthroughs in medicine, transportation, infrastructure, and technology. Overarching rules and institutions tamed and transformed unstable financial markets and turned boom-bust cycles into more manageable ups and downs. Protections against excessive insecurity and abject destitution encouraged the forward-looking investments and social integration that sustained growth required. At every level of society, the gains in health, education, income, and capacity were breathtaking. The mixed economy was a spectacularly positive-sum bargain: It redistributed power and resources, but as its impacts broadened and diffused, virtually everyone was made massively better off.

I turned fifty and decided to take a break. After twenty-five years of working, it seemed like a good idea. Honestly, I was feeling depleted. I still cared about my career and realized, amid a worsening economic climate, that I was lucky to have one. But that appreciation felt more lodged in my head than my heart. One day, United Airlines sent me a card, along with some new luggage tags, offering congratulations on having flown 2 million miles. Quick arithmetic translated all those zeroes into the equivalent of flying from one side of the country to the other every single day—Sundays, holidays, birthdays, sick or well—for more than two years. Maybe the card from United should have offered condolences. It all added up to an abiding fatigue. And a question: Did I want to fly 2 million more miles over the next twenty-five years of my life? Was I having a low-grade midlife crisis? I had no red sports car, reckless affair,

I’m alone,” she wrote, “and I want to share something with somebody.”4 Loneliness. It’s a cry. A moan, a wail. It’s a gasp whose origin is the recesses of our souls. Can you hear it? The abandoned child. The divorcée. The quiet home. The empty mailbox. The long days. The longer nights. A one-night stand. A forgotten birthday. A silent phone. Cries of loneliness. Listen again. Tune out the traffic and turn down the TV. The cry is there. Our cities are full of Judy Bucknells. You can hear their cries. You can hear them in the convalescent home among the sighs and the shuffling feet. You can hear them in the prisons among the moans of shame and the calls for mercy. You can hear them if you walk the manicured streets of suburban America, among the aborted ambitions and aging homecoming queens. Listen for it in the halls of our high schools where peer pressure weeds out the “have-nots” from the “haves.” This moan in a minor key knows all spectrums of society. From the top to the bottom. From the failures to the famous. From the poor to the rich. From the married to the single. Judy Bucknell was not alone.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. —Matthew 5:6 (KJV) Hey, old man.” It was my sister Keri on the line. “I can’t believe you are about to turn forty.” Hearing those words rang hard in my head. How could I be forty? It was time for a reality check. I was passionate about my career. My son Harrison was a wellspring of joy, and six-month-old Mary Katherine had forever changed Corinne’s and my life for the better. Yet, I couldn’t help but think about my shortcomings. Did I reach out to others or was I too self-centered? Was I giving back in proportion to what had been given to me? Was I mindful enough of the teachings of Jesus? Was I His defender? I tortured myself remembering that Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. achieved greatness before age forty. How could my life ever measure up to theirs? My big day started with birthday calls, but by lunch I was feeling disappointed. How anticlimactic it seemed. In the afternoon, Corinne suggested we take a drive to a friend’s farm. She led me to a converted barn and swung open the door. “Surprise!” The room was filled with family and friends. Toasts followed. One friend spoke of our work in Africa; another thanked me for helping his parents through a hard financial time; another mentioned my work in the inner city. Small steps, I thought. Tiny acts far from greatness. But wait! Why am I treating forty as a deadline? What better age to begin again to make the world right, to reach out, to give, to defend God’s rightness? Everything old turned new in that moment, and I was on my way. Father, I want to do more than long for a better world. Come with me. Help me make it happen. —Brock Kidd Digging Deeper: Gal 6:9; Eph 2:10

Today was a day to face that very temptation. A family who had become dear friends had left the church with no warning or explanation. Not even good bye. When they were missing on that first Sunday, we didn’t realize that they had removed themselves from our church. We thought maybe someone was sick or an alarm clock didn’t go off or something simple. If it had been something serious, they would have called us, of course. We had done so much for them and with them. We rejoiced when they rejoiced, we cried when they cried, we prayed with them, we prayed for them, we loved them and felt as if they loved us in return. Of course, one Sunday turned to two, and then three. I mentioned to Michael that I had called and left a message. He told me that he had the same thought as well. He had left a message and sent a card. We felt sad as the realization sank in: they had left the church. People don’t know how to leave a church, and many pastors don’t take such a loss graciously. In all our determinations about pastoring, we had considered the possibility of losing members, but this family was the first. It was time for a lesson for all of us, and I felt the Lord tugging at my spirit. I was to take the first step. Sunday afternoon, Michael taking a nap, kids playing games in their room... Now was as good a time as any. I got into my car and headed toward their house. Suddenly nervous, I sat in the driveway for a minute at first. What was I doing here again? Pastor’s wives don’t do this. I had been around pastor’s wives all my life. Since sensing my call to full time ministry at eighteen, I had been paying close attention to them, and I had never seen one of them do this. I got my words together. I needed an eloquent prayer for such a moment as this one: “Lord, help” (okay, so it wasn’t eloquent). I remembered a verse in Jeremiah: “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings” (17:10). The Lord knew my heart, and He understood. In this situation, I knew that I had opened myself up to Him. In this situation, I knew that my heart was pure before Him. All of a sudden, my courage returned. I opened the car door and willed myself toward the front porch. As I walked up the driveway, I also thought about Paul’s warning which I had read earlier that morning: “they failed to reach their goal... because their minds were fixed on what they achieved instead of what they believed” (Romans 9:31-32). This family was not my achievement; they were the Lord’s creation. What I believed was that I had been right in opening my heart to them. What I believed was that Michael and I had been faithful to the Lord and that we had helped this family while they were in our flock. I had not failed to reach my goal thus far, and I felt determined not to fail now. This front porch was not unfamiliar to me. I had been here before on many occasions, with my husband and children. Happy times: dinners, cook-outs, birthdays, engagement announcements, births.... Sad times as well: teenaged child rebelling, financial struggles, hospital stays or even death .... We had been invited to share heartache and joy alike. No, “invited” is the wrong word. We were needed. We were family, and family comes together at such times. This afternoon, however, was different. I was standing on this familiar front porch for a reason that had never brought me here before: I came to say good bye. On this front porch, I knocked on the door. This family had been with us for years, and we had been with them. Remembering how this family had helped and blessed our congregation, I quietly smiled. Remembering how they had enriched our personal lives with their friendship and encouragement, I could feel the tears burning behind my eyes. We would miss them. Remembering all that we had done for them, I wondered how they could leave with no word or even warning. Just stopped coming. Just

For as many as 25,000 other children who reach their eighteenth birthdays each year, the emotions are similar. But there is a defining difference. These are young people who step through a doorway into a world full of unknowns, without the connections and supports that other children take for granted. Something has happened in their lives that forever makes them different: Usually through no fault of their own, they were taken away from their families and placed in foster care.1 They entered a bureaucratic system peopled with strangers who had complete control over where they lived, where they went to school, and even whether they ever saw their families again. The supports in their lives were not people who loved them, but people who were paid for the roles they played—caseworkers, judges, attorneys, and either shift workers in group homes or a succession of often kind, but always temporary, foster parents. In most states, on the day that a child in foster care turns eighteen, these supports largely disappear. The people who once attended to that child’s needs are now either unable or unwilling to continue; a new case demands their time, a new child requires the bed. There is often no one with whom to share small successes. And with no one to approach for advice, garden-variety emergencies—a flat tire, a stolen wallet, a missing birth certificate—escalate into full-blown crises.

A lady at the general store said the Walking Skeleton takes arms and hands from the statues so it can turn into a person again!” “That’s one of the tales going around, but, of course, it’s just a story,” Charlotte said. “I really don’t know how the statues got damaged recently. They are quite old and already worn away by the weather. But now a few pieces are missing--not just falling off, but disappearing. I do hope you can all keep an eye on the property.” This gave Jessie a good idea. “We gave Benny an instant camera for his birthday. If we take pictures of the statues and something happens to them, maybe we can figure out when it happened and who was around at that time.” “Excellent,” Charlotte said. “I’ll be dropping off a job list tomorrow morning with Hilda and William. I’ll make sure to tell them to let you children photograph and sketch around the property. That will give them more time to do other things.” “Here’s to catching the Walking Skeleton!” Jessie said. The Aldens clinked their lemonade glasses. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

Roommates ...the door opened and the most improbable trio walked in: a tiny dark-haired man, a very tall and big-nosed guy with long hair like a rock star, and a girl in a white nightgown with a toilet seat around her neck. They were Edmondo Zanolini, Michael Laub, and a fifteen-year-old girl named Brigitte—an Italian, a Belgian, and a Swede— and they were the performance-art trio who called themselves Maniac Productions. They gave themselves this name because, among other things, they would enlist people from their own families to do strange things. For instance, Edmondo’s grandfather was a pyromaniac. And since he was also a bit senile, he was very dangerous—he had set his house on fire a number of times. His family was very careful to keep matches out of his reach at all times, except when Maniac Productions was performing. Then Edmondo would invite his grandfather to the theater and give him a big box of matches; the grandfather would wander around the theater lighting fires while the group performed and pretended not to notice him. This was his maniac thing. It was very original theater, and very satisfying to Edmondo’s grandfather. He didn’t care if the audience was looking at him or not, because he had his box of matches. Edmondo and Brigitte moved into our flat. Michael came from a family of diamond merchants in Brussels and stayed in five-star hotels. Another tenant was Piotr from Poland. Piotr had a book of logic—I think it was Wittgenstein translated into Polish—and for reasons best known to himself, he kept it in the freezer. This book was his favorite thing in the world. And every morning he would wake up with this imbecilic smile on his face, take his book out of the freezer, wait patiently until the page he wanted to read unfroze, read to us from it in Polish, then turn the page and put the book back in the freezer for the next day. Brigitte’s father had started the pornography industry in Sweden—a very big deal; the porn revolution really began there—and she hated her father; she hated everybody. She was a deeply depressed person: she literally never spoke a word. All of us in the flat ate all our meals together, and she would just sit there, completely silent. Then in the middle of the night one night, Edmondo knocked on our door. I opened it and said, “What’s wrong?” “She talks, she talks!” he said. “What did she say?” I asked. “She said, ‘Boo,’ ” he said. “That’s not much,” I said. The next morning, she packed and left. (...) “I’m so happy,” Michael told us one day, about his pair of girlfriends. “The two of them complement each other perfectly.” Marinka and Ulla knew (and liked) each other, and knew (but didn’t like) the arrangement. Then Ulla got pregnant—not only pregnant, but pregnant with twins. When Michael told Marinka about it, she moved to Australia. And Piotr followed her there, and committed suicide on her birthday.

For the best bounce house & water slide rentals in Waxahachie, turn to the pros at Inflatable Company 85 for all your party & event rental needs in Waxahachie. Whether you're hosting a backyard birthday party at your house, an awesome event at one of Waxahachie's great schools or even a Vacation Bible School at your church, we have the experience and equipment to send your Waxahachie event over the top! We have bounce houses, water slides, obstacle courses & more. Call today!

The Blank Somebody’s left the garden gate ajar; He won’t run out. No need to back the car So carefully because . . . And in the hall You will not trip against that much-chewed ball (I bought a new one, just a week ago, For his next birthday. He will never know). We’ve cleared up everything; there’s not a trace- Lead, collar, basket -- yet his wistful face Peers round each corner; halfway down the stair One turns expectant . . . surely he is there? Then you remember, and the silence dear Answers our question. “No, he is not here.

For the best water slide rentals Austin, TX has to offer, turn to the pros at Bounce Across Texas for your next party or event in Austin, TX for wet & wild fun. Are you looking for a way to add a fun-filled experience to an upcoming church event, birthday party in your neighborhood or a school event at one of Austin's awesome schools? Treat your kids, guests, and friends from Austin, TX to entertaining outdoor activities with our gigantic, colorful water slides.

The crescent kick is one of the most difficult kicks to master in Tae Kwon Do, but when executed properly, it is one of the most dangerous.  Detective Sergeant Jamie Johansson had been practising it for nearly six years, and despite being only five-foot-six, she could comfortably slam her heel into the ear of someone that was over six feet. And now she had it down to a science. She knew she couldn’t do enough damage with a punch to put someone down if she had to, but a well-executed crescent kick would do the job. Especially from her lightweight trail boots. Her partner made fun of her for wearing them — said that detectives shouldn’t be wearing hiking boots, especially not in the city, but they were tough and she was as fast in them as she was in her trainers. Which she thought made them a lot more suited to tracking down scumbags than Roper’s black leather Chelsea boots.  He disagreed. She didn’t really care.  Smoking thirty a day meant that he wasn’t going to be doing much running anyway. ‘Come on,’ Cake said, jerking the pad. ‘Again. Like you mean it.’ She flicked her head, throwing sweat onto the matt, wound up, lifted her leg, snapped her knee back, and then lashed out. Her shin smashed into the training pad with a dull thwap and she sank into her knees, panting.  Cake clapped them together and grinned with wide, crooked teeth. ‘Good job,’ he said. ‘You’re really getting some power into those, now. But make sure to ice that foot, yeah?’ She caught her breath quickly and stood up, nodding, strands of ash-blonde hair sticking to her forehead, the thick plait running between her lithe shoulders coming loose. ‘Sure,’ she said, measuring her trainer. Cake was six-two and twice her weight. He was Windrush, in his fifties, and ran a mixed martial arts gym just near Duckett’s Green. He was a retired boxer turned trainer that scored his nickname after winning a fight in the late nineties on his birthday. When the commentator asked what he was going to do to celebrate, he said that he was going to eat a birthday cake. Everyone thought that was funny, and it stuck. He had a pretty bad concussion at the time, which probably contributed to the answer. But there was no getting away from it now.  He pulled the pads off his forearms and rubbed his eyes. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, looking over at the clock on the wall. It was just before seven.  He yawned and stretched, cracking his spine. The gym wouldn’t open until midday to the public, but he lived upstairs in a tiny studio, and he and Jamie had an arrangement. It kept him fit and active, and she could train one-on-one. Just how she liked it. She paid her dues of course, slid him extra on top of the monthly for his time. But he said that

Lorenzo steps closer, his body a breath away from mine as he whispers, "Trust me?" I have no idea what he's asking, but I nod because what else am I gonna do? We're about to go to dinner and pretend like we're happy newlyweds with someone who could blow up my entire social circle, and likely my professional life, with a single well-placed word. Lorenzo walks me backward until my back hits the wall. I gasp, surprised. But he's not done. "Trust me," he orders softly. And with that, he picks me to straddle him and slams my back against the door with a thump. It rattles loudly behind me. "Fuck, Abigail, Quick, mia rosa. Come on my cock before your friends get here or they're going to hear me fucking you deep and hard. I want your cum on me and my cum in you while we sit at this prim and proper dinner, wife." I gasp, both at his filthy talk and the ridge of his cock pressing against my core. "Ungh." I can't make words, am barely making incoherent sounds, and Lorenzo lifts one hand from my thigh to hold my head still. He meets my eyes, one of his brows lifted pointedly. If I couldn't feel his cock, I wouldn't even know what this is doing to him. For all the fire rushing through my body and turning my brain to melted goo, he's clear-eyed and has a plan. I blink and realize what he's doing. Emily needs to think we're newlyweds, and what do newlyweds do non-stop? Fuck. Now that I've caught on, he winks at me and I smile back. He thrusts against me and I bounce on the door. "Yes, hard ... just like that," I moan. He grunts, finding a pace that is actually doing a lot for me even though I just came in the shower a bit ago. I'd be embarrassed at the wet heat of my core, but his cock jumps against me. I like that he's carried away too as he dry humps me, only hinting at what we're playacting. "Take it. Take me, Abigail," he hisses through clenched teeth. Is that for effect or is he holding the reins that tightly? "Yes, my Italian Stallion!" I cry out, clawing at his shoulders for purchase. Confusion mars his face as he mouths, "Italian Stallion?" I shake me head and whisper back, "I don't know, it just came out." He grins like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard and goes back to thrusting against me with renewed furor. "That's it, mia rosa. Are you going to come for me?" Oh shit. I am. Like I am ... for real. Any sane, rational, reasonable person would tilt their hips and move away from the power of his thrusts to save a little face. Do I? Absolutely not. If anything, I'm humping him back, riding him like the pony at my sixteenth birthday party. Don't laugh ... it was an amazing blowout. Like I'm about to have ... "Yes, yes. Right there Lorenz-ohh!" He pulls me tight against him, his cock grinding against my clit as he grunts through several short strokes and says something I don't understand in Italian. Is he? Did he? As I float back to Earth and realize what just happened, there's another knock on the door. This one is harder and louder. "Hey, Abi! We have reservations, you know?" Emily yells through the wood, literally inches away from where I just loudly came on Lorenzo's cock for real.

ichariba chode, a local expression that means “treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.” It turns out that one of the secrets to happiness of Ogimi’s residents is feeling like part of a community. From an early age they practice yuimaaru, or teamwork, and so are used to helping one another. Nurturing friendships, eating light, getting enough rest, and doing regular, moderate exercise are all part of the equation of good health, but at the heart of the joie de vivre that inspires these centenarians to keep celebrating birthdays and cherishing each new day is their ikigai. The purpose of this book is to bring the secrets of Japan’s centenarians to you and give you the tools to find your own ikigai. Because those who discover their ikigai have everything they need for a long and joyful journey through life. Happy travels! Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

The situation as far as love is concerned corresponds, as it has to by necessity, to this social character of modern man. Automatons cannot love; they can exchange their “personality packages” and hope for a fair bargain. One of the most significant expressions of love, and especially of marriage with this alienated structure, is the idea of the “team.” In any number of articles on happy marriage, the ideal described is that of the smoothly functioning team. This description is not too different from the idea of a smoothly functioning employee; he should be “reasonably independent,” co-operative, tolerant, and at the same time ambitious and aggressive. Thus, the marriage counselor tells us, the husband should “understand” his wife and be helpful. He should comment favorably on her new dress, and on a tasty dish. She, in turn, should understand when he comes home tired and disgruntled, she should listen attentively when he talks about his business troubles, should not be angry but understanding when he forgets her birthday. All this kind of relationship amounts to is the well-oiled relationship between two persons who remain strangers all their lives, who never arrive at a “central relationship,” but who treat each other with courtesy and who attempt to make each other feel better.

Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour. 'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling. Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next. Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see. Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.' In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same. At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.

The children’s birthday parties were such fun. We would book Smarty Arty, who was the children’s entertainer of the day. He had a miniature gold coach that he would bring to parties and the birthday girl or boy was allowed to choose one friend, and only one, to go in the coach with them. It was then pulled around by a lady in a very unsuitable tight spangly outfit who took the part of the horse. She drew the coach around the garden and everyone clapped. Of course, it was clever of Smarty Arty only to allow two of the children on the coach, no matter how much the others begged. It made them all desperate for their turn, and the likelihood of him being booked for their parties went up accordingly. Smarty Arty also, very wisely, made sure there was sherry for the nannies, and later, as he got more successful, he suggested champagne, and they loved him even more. They could sit around, drinking and gossiping, while the children were entranced by the golden coach.

During one of our infrequent dinners, he had a revelation. After an awkward pause, he stammered, “I’m afraid I ruined your life.” It was the closest he ever got to admitting fault. He looked so small underneath his too-big white polo shirt. He has always been fragile, but now he looked it. “You’re very lucky,” I said. “I turned out fine.” But still, he must have had the sense that there were amends to be made. Because months later, he asked me, “What can I do to be closer to you?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Make a list,” he replied. “Make a list of what you want, and give it to me, and I’ll do it.” I never made the list. I didn’t make the list because I was confused about what to put on it. What would fix things? Was there really anything that could make up for what had happened? Remember my birthday? Be there for me when I’m falling apart? Come visit me one time? Decide that for just one Christmas, shit, even one minor holiday, you’re going to spend it with me? Call me, text me, just to ask how I am? Fully acknowledge all the things you’ve done wrong instead of minimising them and claiming that I’m obsessed with the past? Acknowledge how much this hurts?

My passion for cooking meals for loved ones originated when I was growing up. Because our family didn't have much materially, my siblings and I didn't get excited about gifts and Christmas and birthdays--but we were exuberant in anticipation of the food! I remember my mother preparing and cooking food for days before Christmas. You could smell the aromas wafting throughout the house, and if you were lucky, she would allow you to lick the spoon and taste a little bit beforehand. As a result, my wife and I now delight in showing the same love my mother put into the preparation of special meals into the celebrations we enjoy. From all those years of watching my mother prepare food for the family, and from my own limited experience in the kitchen, I've realized an important lesson: quality takes time. While most people tend to agree with me, no one particularly enjoys waiting patiently for the turkey to come out of the oven or for the pie crust to be made from scratch. We want the quality, but we don't want to wait for it. As I look around, it doesn't take much to see that this current generation is accustomed to fast foods, instant information, and new friendships at the click of a button. Because of such immediate results, we've ignored the diminishing quality of those things we recieve instantly and our subsequent lack of appreciation for them. Our desire for instant gratification has ushered us to the point that we sacrifice excellent quality because of the difficulty and time it takes to produce it.

Wouldn’t you like to see what I bought for you? Aren’t you just a little curious?” He was, but he couldn’t let her know that. She’d pounce on that weakness and use it against him. “How about we make a deal,” she proposed as they neared his office, which she knew he had every intention of locking himself in. “No deals, Taryn.” “That’s a shame,” she said as she slid down his back, exhaling a heavy sigh. “It means I went to Victoria’s Secret for nothing.” She watched in satisfaction as he stopped still with his hand on the doorknob. “Victoria’s Secret?” he repeated without turning. “Yeah, but never mind.” She went to return to the kitchen, but then he spoke. “Out of curiosity…” She twirled to see that he was still facing the office door. “Well, I bought this kinky little baby-doll, all black lace like the one I tried on that time when I was tormenting you.” He cleared his throat. “Black lace?” “Yeah.” She took a few steps toward the kitchen, knowing what was coming next. “What was this deal you had in mind?” he called after her as he finally turned. He was well aware that she had played him, but only an idiot would miss out on this. She faced him and shrugged. “I was just going to propose that if you try to enjoy yourself and celebrate your birthday with us, then later—for one whole hour—I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. I’ll be kind of like your sex toy.” His cock jerked and quickly began to harden. “Anything I want?

I’m throwing a dinner party at my house, and you’re coming over.” “I am, huh? I kinda like it when you tell me what to do. For such a pretty boy, you sure can play butch.” He took a pen from the pen cup and wrote an address on a Post-it Note. “This is the house I live in with my brother. I just want to prepare you ahead of time, before you see the place. I do okay as a dentist, but my brother’s the one who put up the down payment. He’s a software engineer. He sold a few apps.” Megan checked the address and nodded. “He sold more than a few apps,” she said. “When you meet him, you should pretend that sort of thing impresses you, and that you think he’s cooler than me. I’ll know you’re faking it, of course, but he could use the self-esteem boost. The dinner party is in honor of his birthday. He’s turning the big three-oh, and he’s not very happy about getting older.” “Can I sit on his lap and sing him Happy Birthday?” “Seven o’clock,” he said. “Don’t bring any food or wine.” “Are you trying to use reverse psychology on me?” “Not at all,” he said. “My brother always gets enough food and wine to feed an army. All you need to bring is your gorgeous self.” “And I will. Wearing nothing but a trench coat,” she said. “Please wear clothes.

Traditions are conditioned reflexes. Throughout Part 2 of this book, you will find suggestions for establishing family traditions that will trigger happy anticipation and leave lasting, cherished memories. Traditions around major holidays and minor holidays. Bedtime, bath-time, and mealtime traditions; sports and pastime traditions; birthday and anniversary traditions; charitable and educational traditions. If your family’s traditions coincide with others’ observances, such as celebrating Thanksgiving, you will still make those traditions unique to your family because of the personal nuances you add. Volunteering at the food bank on Thanksgiving morning, measuring and marking their heights on the door frame in the basement, Grandpa’s artistic carving of the turkey, and their uncle’s famous gravy are the traditions our kids salivated about when they were younger, and still do on their long plane rides home at the end of November each year. (By the way, our dog Lizzy has confirmed Pavlov’s observations; when the carving knife turns on, cue the saliva, tail wagging, and doggy squealing.) But don’t limit your family’s traditions to the big and obvious events like Thanksgiving. Weekly taco nights, family book club and movie nights, pajama walks, ice cream sundaes on Sundays, backyard football during halftime of TV games, pancakes in Mom and Dad’s bed on weekends, leaf fights in the fall, walks to the sledding hill on the season’s first snow, Chinese food on anniversaries, Indian food for big occasions, and balloons hanging from the ceiling around the breakfast table on birthday mornings. Be creative, even silly. Make a secret family noise together when you’re the only ones in the elevator. When you share a secret that “can’t leave this room,” everybody knows to reach up in the air and grab the imaginary tidbit before it can get away. Have a family comedy night or a talent show on each birthday. Make holiday cards from scratch. Celebrate major family events by writing personalized lyrics to an old song and karaoking your new composition together. There are two keys to establishing family traditions: repetition and anticipation. When you find something that brings out excitement and smiles in your kids, keep doing it. Not so often that it becomes mundane, but on a regular and predictable enough basis that it becomes an ingrained part of the family repertoire. And begin talking about the traditional event days ahead of time so by the time it finally happens, your kids are beside themselves with excitement. Anticipation can be as much fun as the tradition itself.

Natalie runs manicured fingertips through her shiny dark hair. She’s every bit as alluring as Marissa indicated. “Yup. I have one child, too, Veronica. She turned six last month.” With a Frozen-themed birthday party, I silently add.

Oates struggled with wet feet throughout the seventy-nine-day journey across packed ice. As they closed in on the Pole, they had the horror of encountering the abandoned remnants of the Norwegians’ tent. Inside, a note from Amundsen informing them he had beaten them to it. Defeated and distraught, the small party attempted to return home, yet progress was agonizingly slow. Blizzards battered the party, and Oates, suffering from both gangrene and frostbite, had his big toe turn black and his body become yellow. His inability to walk bogged down the entire party, who, despite Oates’s protestations, refused to leave him behind. One the 17th of March, on his thirty-second birthday, Oates awoke and muttered his last words to the rest of his team, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He then proceeded to wander off into a −40°F blizzard and was never seen again.

and she giggled as she walked against the current of bodies in the crosswalk. The subway was right there, but she didn’t want to take it yet—the beauty of New York City was walking, was serendipity and strangers, and it was still her birthday, and so she was just going to keep going. Alice turned and walked up Eighth, past the crummy tourist shops selling magnets and keychains and i ♥ ny T-shirts and foam fingers shaped like the Statue of Liberty. Alice had walked for almost ten blocks when she realized she had a destination. She and Sam and their friends had enjoyed many, many hours in bars as teenagers: they’d spent nights at the Dublin House, on 79th Street; at the Dive Bar, on Amsterdam and 96th Street, with the neon sign shaped like bubbles, though that one was a little too close to home to be safe; and some of the fratty bars farther down Amsterdam, the ones with the buckets of beers for twenty dollars and scratched pool tables. Sometimes they even went to some NYU bars downtown, on MacDougal Street, where they could dash across the street for falafel and then go back to the bar, like it was their office and they were running out for lunch. Their favorite bar, though, was Matryoshka, a Russian-themed bar in the 50th Street 1/9 subway station. Now it was just the 1 train, but back then, there was also the 9. Things were always changing, even when they didn’t feel like it. Alice wondered if no one ever felt as old as they were because it happened so slowly, and you were only ever one day slower and creakier, and the world changed so gradually that by the time cars had evolved from boxy to smooth, or green taxis had joined yellow ones, or MetroCards had replaced tokens, you were used to it. Everyone

Later in the day, Holly frowned at her reflection in the mirror. “This can’t be right!” Holly muttered to herself. She looked like a cross between a panda bear and a raccoon. She had tried to apply a more advanced version of makeup than she was used to, and it was not going well. “Smokey eye, my foot! I look like I have two black eyes.” She had not done the proper shading with her eye shadow, and now her large green eyes were encased with a deep black color that spanned her entire eyelid. “Maybe I should try a different one,” Holly mused aloud. She sat in William’s bedroom at his dresser. She already had on her pretty crushed velvet black dress and a small heart-shaped diamond pendant. It had been William’s birthday gift to her last year. “Let me re-read this article again to see if I can make sense of these instructions.” Holly read her magazine article out loud. “Which Greek Goddess are you? Athena, Venus, or Aphrodite? Check out our makeup tips below to turn heads at your next event!” “Hmmmm, that sounds soooooo good, if only I was better at applying makeup.” She had decided to try their Aphrodite look and had been trying to apply the eyeliner to give her a smoky eye effect. Holly had to wash her face four times already and start over because each time was worse than the last. “Concentrate, Holly, or you’ll be late for the gala. This is your last chance; it’s do or die time!” she warned her reflection in the mirror. “So, it says to put the light grey eyeshadow on the inner one-third of my eyelids. Hmmm, maybe that’s the problem. I don’t know where the inner third is.” She got an idea and went to William’s desk. Looking around, she found a ruler. “Ah-ha! Eureka, I got it!” She went back to her position at his dresser and closed her eyes for a quick, small prayer, then held the ruler up to measure her eye. “Ah-ha! Twenty-one millimeters. So, that means the inner one-third of my eye must be from my nose out seven millimeters . . . right about HERE!” Holly expertly applied the light grey eye shadow to the inner third of her eyelids. “What a big improvement already! Wow! I’m not a panda bear anymore! Ok, one-third down, two-thirds to go . . . I can do this!” Reading further, she said, “Ok, now apply the dark grey eye shadow to the next third of your eye, finishing with the dark brown eye shadow on the outer third of your eyelid.” Holly expertly followed the instructions and sat back in her chair, stunned. She looked beautiful! She had achieved the desired effect, and now her green eyes were enhanced to perfection. “Wow, wow, wow!” Holly felt encouraged to keep going. She read the next instructions. “‘Now, apply blush to your face with an emphasis on contouring your cheekbones.’” “‘Contouring my cheekbones? Who do they think I am, Rembrandt?” Holly said with a groan. Holly gingerly picked up her blush container as if it were about to bite her. She decided another quick prayer wouldn’t go amiss. With a deep breath she muttered, “Ok, I’m going in!” She glanced nervously at the picture in the magazine and tried her hardest to follow it along her cheekbones. “That turned out pretty good!” Holly turned her face this way and that, examining it. It may not have been exactly as in the picture, but the blush now accentuated her beautiful high cheekbones. “Whew! Only the lip left, thank goodness! You got this, Holly!” She encouraged her reflection in the mirror.

Jessica Kim was one of them. A damn shame, she was one of those Asian worker-bee types. Always here past midnight. I heard she worked on Christmas. A real numbers whiz." "True, but she wasn't the best fit for client services. At her level, she needed to be a thinker, not a doer. I know this sounds crass, but her clothes never fit. They were a little too baggy for may taste." "Maybe you should have paid her more so she could hire a tailor." Laughter. "Wasn't she already being overpaid anyway, especially for a female associate?" My stomach lurched. I'd heard enough. My sadness vortexed into pure rage as I stomped over to them. "I gave blood, sweat, and tears for this company." I growled and pointed at Robert, my former group director. "You begged me to cover for you if your wife called when you were wining and dining that female client last year." Robert's face reddened. "But you didn't. I'm going through a divorce now." I went down the line to the next asshole. "Shaun, you tried to expense your escapade at a strip club by saying it was my birthday dinner and HR thought I was in on the scam. And Dan, you transposed all those numbers on the deal sheet and I caught them just before they were sent out, remember? You could have been fired for that, especially for showing up to work high. I went above and beyond for you. I saved your ass." Their jaws dropped. No, they weren't going to schmooze their way out of this one. "I know what you're thinking. How dare she say these things to us? She's just bitter because she was let go. Well, it's partly true. I'm bitter because I've wasted seven years of my life at this company that turned around and stabbed me in the back. If I wasn't leadership material, why didn't a female mentor coach me? Oh right, because there aren't any female execs here. But thank you, sincerely, for the wake-up-call. Now I can take my bonuses and severance and do something better with my time rather than covering for you and making you all richer.

when she turned to Orlando to speak to him, I saw she had what Pa Salt would have termed a Roman nose, which sat prominently in her striking face. She was certainly not classically beautiful and, from the look of her jeans and old sweater, did not care to make herself more so. Yet, there was something very attractive about her and I realized I wanted her to like me—an unusual feeling. “Are you coping back there?” she asked me. “Not far now.” “Yes, thank you.” I leaned my head against the windowpane as the thick hedges, their height exaggerated by the low car, flew by me, the country lanes becoming narrower. It felt so good to be out of London, with only the odd red-brick chimney stack peeping out from behind the wall of green. We turned right, through a pair of old gates that led to a drive so potholed that Marguerite’s and Orlando’s heads bumped against the roof. “I really must ask Mouse to bring the tractor and fill in these holes with gravel before the winter comes,” she commented to Orlando. “Here we are, Star,” she added as she pulled the car to a halt in front of a large, graceful house, its walls formed from mellow red brick, with ivy and wisteria fringing the uneven windows in greenery. Tall, thin chimney stacks, which emphasized the Tudor architecture, reached up into the crisp September sky. As I squeezed myself out of the back of the Fiat, I imagined the house’s interior to be rambling as opposed to impressive—it was certainly no stately home; rather, it looked as if it had gently aged and sunk slowly into the countryside surrounding it. It spoke of a bygone era, one that I loved reading about in books, and I experienced a twinge of longing. I followed Marguerite and Orlando toward the magnificent oak front door, and saw a young boy wobbling toward us on a shiny red bike. He let out a strange muffled shout, tried to wave, and promptly fell off the bike. “Rory!” Marguerite ran to him, but he had already picked himself up. He spoke again, and I wondered if he was foreign, as I couldn’t make out what he was saying. She dusted him down, then the boy picked up the bike and the two of them walked back to us. “Look who’s here,” Marguerite said, turning directly to the boy to speak to him. “It’s Orlando and his friend Star. Try saying ‘Star.’ ” She particularly enunciated the “st” in my name. “Ss-t-aahh,” the boy said as he approached me, a smile on his face, before holding up his hand and opening his fingers out like a shining star. I saw that Rory was the owner of a pair of inquisitive green eyes, framed by dark lashes. His wavy copper-colored hair glowed in the sun, and his rosy cheeks dimpled with happiness. I recognized that he was the kind of child that one would never want to say no to. “He prefers to go by the name ‘Superman,’ don’t you, Rory?” Orlando chuckled, holding up his hand in a fist like Superman taking off into the air. Rory nodded, then shook my hand with all the dignity of a superhero, and turned to Orlando for a hug. After giving him a tight squeeze and a tickle, Orlando set him down, then squatted in front of him and used his hands to sign, also speaking the words clearly. “Happy birthday! I have your present in Marguerite’s car. Would you like to come and get it with me?” “Yes please,” Rory spoke and signed, and I knew then that he was deaf. I rifled through my rusty mental catalog of what I had learned

Wow,” I remarked to an older man who had just turned away from a group. “That’s what I call a birthday cake. You think someone’s going to jump out of that thing?” “Hope not,” he said in a gravelly voice. “They might catch fire from all the candles.” I laughed. “Yes, and all that frosting would make the stop, drop, and roll so messy.” Turning toward him, I extended my hand. “Ella Varner, from Austin. Are you a friend of the Travises? Never mind, of course you are. They wouldn’t invite one of their enemies, would they?” He smiled as he shook my hand. His teeth were a scrupulous shade of white I always found mildly startling in a person his age. “They would especially invite one of their enemies.” He was a good-looking old guy, not much taller than me, his steel-colored hair cut short, his skin leathery and sun-cured. Charisma clung to him as if it had been rubbed in like sunscreen. Meeting his gaze, I was arrested by the color of his eyes, the bittersweet dark of Venezuelan chocolate. As I stared into those familiar eyes, I knew exactly who he was. “Happy birthday, Mr. Travis,” I said with an abashed grin. “Thank you, Miss Varner.” “Call me Ella, please. I think my crashing your party puts us on a first-name basis, doesn’t it?

If you are a boy who has just had his tenth birthday, your next one seems an eternity away. That’s because the single year that stretches ahead amounts to 10 per cent of the time you have been on earth. It’s a different sensation when you turn 50, because the distance to your 51st birthday amounts to just 2 per cent of the time you have been alive. As you get older and more experienced, you start to think about how you allocate time.

When we were finally in position, the others pulling away, I whispered, “Poseur.” Rafe glanced over, brows arching. “Keep calling me that and I might get insulted.” “Stop earning it and I’ll stop saying it.” I faced forward as I tested my rope and waited for Daniel to get to the top. “Are you implying that I know how to climb?” “Are you implying that I’m stupid enough to think you’d challenge me if you didn’t? Of course, you can’t be that good if you need to slow me down by pretending you don’t know what you’re doing.” He was about to shoot something back, when Daniel leaned over and called, “Ready?” Rafe motioned for him to wait a second, then whispered, “How about we up the stakes? I win, you talk to me.” Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “I’m afraid to ask what you mean by talk…” “Exactly that. I win, I get thirty minutes of your time tonight.” “To charm me and lie to me and pretend to be whoever you think I want?” “Nope. Tonight it’s me, in case you haven’t noticed. The real Rafe Martinez. A special one-night appearance.” “And if I win?” He grinned. “Then you get to spend thirty minutes with me, lucky birthday girl.

How about we up the stakes? I win, you talk to me.” Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “I’m afraid to ask what you mean by talk…” “Exactly that. I win, I get thirty minutes of your time tonight.” “To charm me and lie to me and pretend to be whoever you think I want?” “Nope. Tonight it’s me, in case you haven’t noticed. The real Rafe Martinez. A special one-night appearance.” “And if I win?” He grinned. “Then you get to spend thirty minutes with me, lucky birthday girl.

How about we up the stakes? I win, you talk to me.” Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “I’m afraid to ask what you mean by talk…” “Exactly that. I win, I get thirty minutes of your time tonight.” “To charm me and lie to me and pretend to be whoever you think I want?” “Nope. Tonight it’s me, in case you haven’t noticed. The real Rafe Martinez. A special one-night appearance.” “And if I win?” He grinned. “Then you get to spend thirty minutes with me, lucky birthday girl.” I laughed and motioned for Daniel to start the countdown. Rafe still pulled the “I don’t know what I’m doing” routine, starting slow and cautious, hoping I’d second-guess my assessment and take it easy. I didn’t. He realized that when my foot reached his shoulder level. By the midpoint, he’d shot up to my waist, but his muttered curses told me he’d underestimated how good I was--or overestimated how good he was--and it was clear he wasn’t going to catch up in time. So I stopped. Daniel leaned over and mouthed, “What are you doing?” Below, the others yelled, a cacophony of shouts and cheers and jeers. Rafe reached up, his bracelet hitting the rock with a ping. I glanced at it. A worn rawhide band with a cat’s-eye stone. I could see his tattoo better, too, as he pulled himself up, and I recognized the symbol. A crow mother kachina. Hopi. As he drew up alongside me, he cocked one brow. “You really want that kiss don’t you?” he said. “No, I just want to see what you can really do.

THERE IS ONE mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair. I sit on the stool and my mother stands behind me with the scissors, trimming. The strands fall on the floor in a dull, blond ring. When she finishes, she pulls my hair away from my face and twists it into a knot. I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can’t say the same of myself. I sneak a look at my reflection when she isn’t paying attention—not for the sake of vanity, but out of curiosity. A lot can happen to a person’s appearance in three months. In my reflection, I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose—I still look like a little girl, though sometime in the last few months I turned sixteen. The other factions celebrate birthdays, but we don’t. It would be self-indulgent. “There,” she says when she pins the knot in place. Her eyes catch mine in the mirror. It is too late to look away, but instead of scolding me, she smiles at our reflection. I frown a little. Why doesn’t she reprimand me for staring at myself? “So today is the day,” she says. “Yes,” I reply. “Are you nervous?” I stare into my own eyes for a moment. Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show me which of the five factions I belong in. And tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, I will decide on a faction; I will decide the rest of my life; I will decide to stay with my family or abandon them. “No,” I say. “The tests don’t have to change our choices.” “Right.” She smiles. “Let’s go eat breakfast.” “Thank you. For cutting my hair.” She kisses my cheek and slides the panel over the mirror. I think my mother could be beautiful, in a different world.

Dinnertime brought a big announcement from Mom and Dad. “How would you like to have a new baby brother or sister in six months?” I didn’t have to think twice. I got off my chair and started laughing and jumping up and down, dancing with my little sister, Linda, who didn’t understand, but it sure made me happy so that had to be a good thing. Janet Elise, (named for my Grandma whose name is Elisa), arrived on a cold day in February on the 25th, 1954. I had just turned six years old two days before Christmas and she was like a birthday present that arrived two months late. I was too young to remember Linda being born, so this was a brand new fantastic experience for a little girl who loved every one of her dolls and put them all to bed with great care every night.

We were just turning to leave when she batted though the pantry door wearing an apron. “Come in!” she said. “I’ve just baked myself a birthday cake!” (The fact that she was turning ninety that day makes this all the more admirable.) The Lonely Palate, Laura Calder

We find a restaurant and order one martini and two steaks. “It’s my mother’s birthday,” Simone tells the waiter. “She’s turning one hundred. Can we have free cake?” She turns to me. “You should have ordered her a salad. You’re out of shape, old lady.” She’s having fun criticizing our mother in front of her face. I lift my dress and show her the thighs. I grab a handful and shake. “Please put those away. I would like to eat again.” Mother craves rye. Mother craves the men at the bar who throw soldierlike nods. The heaviness in mother’s bones spreads. She has to go to bed soon. The dark voice says, rest, idiot. “Mom and I both have the slut gene,” I say. “She’s pulled toward every man.” “I don’t enjoy that thought.” Simone discards the potatoes from her plate onto a napkin she slides over to me, a leftover tradition from childhood that pleases me. Later, I blow out a sputtering candle on a cupcake.

She gestured toward her daughter. “This strange child of mine wants to have read the entire thing before she turns twenty-one. Okay, I said, she can have the enclyco…encloped…oh, all these reference books, but she won’t be getting any more birthday presents. And nothing for Christmas either.” Perdu acknowledged the seven-year-old girl with a nod. The child nodded earnestly back. “Do you think that’s normal?” the mother asked anxiously. “At her age?” “I think she’s brave, clever and right.” “As long as she doesn’t turn out too smart for men.” “For the stupid ones, she will, Madame. But who wants them anyway? A stupid man is every woman’s downfall.

Except me. I turned back to the cliff and stared down into the woods where Joshua Hallal had vanished. And Erica. She stood beside me, staring into the void as well. “I owe you my life, Ripley,” she said. “No,” I said. “You owe your father.” “Who would never have found us if it wasn’t for you. And he certainly wouldn’t have figured out how to stop those missiles, either.” Erica turned to me. “In fact, I’m not sure I could have stopped them. How’d you do it?” I thought about using the Alexander Hale method again, concocting a tale that would make me sound brave and smart and cool under pressure. Instead, I used the Benjamin Ripley method and told the truth. “I just unplugged the system.” Erica stared at me for a moment. And then she laughed. I’d never heard her do this before. It was surprisingly childlike, a sweet little titter that revealed the girl beneath her tough exterior. “Ripley,” she said. “You’re one of a kind.” At that moment, I didn’t care if the president or anyone else ever found out that I’d thwarted SPYDER’s plans. I didn’t care if Alexander Hale stole the credit from me again. Erica Hale knew what I’d done, and that was all that mattered. Her laughter was the greatest reward I could have ever asked for. “By the way,” Erica said, “happy birthday.” I glanced at my watch, startled to see it was well after midnight. With all the excitement, I’d actually lost track of what time it was. I wasn’t sure which was more startling to me: the fact that I’d forgotten it was my own birthday—or that Erica had remembered. “Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t exactly have time to shop, given the kidnapping and all, so I got you this.” Erica pressed something into my hand. To my surprise, it was a human tooth. There was a tiny bit of blood at the end, as though it had just been forcibly removed from someone’s mouth. “Is this Murray’s?” I asked. Erica smiled. “I told him that if SPYDER ever messes with you again, he’s gonna lose a lot more than that.” It was certainly the most disgusting present I’d ever received. And yet, I couldn’t help being touched by the sentiment behind it. “Thanks,” I said. “Could you give me a little help getting back?” Erica asked. “Of course,” I told her. Then I wrapped my arm around her waist to take her weight, and we started through the woods together.

Oh!” the Queen said, visibly shaken. “Is that a cupcake?” The crowning glory of the dessert table was a tower of pink flamingo feather cupcakes. Red turned to the royal baker, who was quivering in their boots. “Ma’am…Your Majesty, I’m so sorry….I found an old recipe of yours….” “Get it out of my sight!” the Queen hissed. Then she patted her brow with a red handkerchief. Red wondered what that was all about. She’d never seen her mother fall apart at the sight of a cupcake before. Then again, she realized she’d never really seen a cupcake before either. She wondered what they tasted like. But perhaps she’d never know, since the baker was taking a tray of them away. The Queen clapped again, back to looking like herself. “So! Birthdays are still illegal. Treats are discouraged! Especially cupcakes. What’s more, all laughter should be avoided before noon—it simply is not good for your heart to laugh so early! Perhaps it’s better not to laugh at all! This obviously means that jokes shall only be told every other Saturday, if one feels the absolute need.” But from her tone it was clear that no one should ever feel the need to tell a joke.

Come see me again. It’s almost my birthday. I’m turning one thousand.

On July 16, 1961, my Hamburg grandmother turned seventy. For her birthday she had asked for a trip to Bavaria with my family. No one could have guessed that

On July 16, 1961, my Hamburg grandmother turned seventy. For her birthday she had asked for a trip to Bavaria with my family. No one could have guessed that this would be our last trip to West Germany together.

Oh. My. God. Are the two of you wearing matching cardigans?" I had gotten so used to Longganisa dressing in cutesy outfits and doing multiple costume changes in a day that I had to glance down at her to remind myself of what she was wearing. "Yeah, Adeena has been obsessed with crochet lately and made these for us. It was Longganisa's birthday last month and this was her present. Well, one of them." Adeena, who loved colors and patterns as much as Ninang Mae did, had also been trying to get me to incorporate more color into my wardrobe. The chunky burnt orange cardigan with oversize buttons was a nice compromise for us, and looked absolutely adorable on Longganisa as well. She knew I couldn't turn down a cute matching outfit. Longganisa cautiously approached Cleo, who hadn't moved from her position at Quinn's feet. There was something regal about the older dog, as if she were waiting for Longganisa to present herself and curtsy. The two sniffed each other for a moment and, after a quick glance at me, Longganisa kneaded the blanket that Cleo was lying on into a little nest before curling up next to her. Cleo must've accepted her because she just laid her head on Longganisa and the two of them promptly fell asleep. Cue me and Quinn whipping out our phones to take pictures and trying not to sob from the cuteness.

She pat Alex gently on his shoulder. “Just a couple of weeks until you turn nineteen too.” “Yep,” he said. “And I expect you all to absolutely spoil me. I can even come up with a gift list. An expensive one!” “Pfeh,” Thundar grunted. “So much for ageing gracefully. You didn’t even get me anything for my birthday!” “You didn’t tell anyone when your birthday was!” Alex protested. “Excuses, excuses,” the minotaur snorted like he was offended. “I think we should get him the greatest gift of all,” Khalik began. “Oh no,” Alex groaned. “—Expulsion.” “Oh, come on!” “Perhaps we should frame him for a crime,” Isolde tapped her chin in thought. “He probably already did something. You know how much of a hardened criminal he is. I heard they even dragged him down to the station. Shady, if you ask me,” Thundar glared at him suspiciously. “You’re all traitors!” Alex shouted. “Oh dear, Theresa, I didn’t know you were dating a hardened criminal.” Mrs. Lu looked at Alex with feigned worry. “Ugh, with friends like you, who needs the Ravener?” he said mournfully.

Melbourne Beach. The inlaid woods are from South America and Africa—caoba, rose, and mahogany. Otherwise, it’s nearly ten feet of full balsa, but chambered for buoyancy. Dave told me he’d built this one with an extra tail rocker, three stringers, and a long panel vee to facilitate rail-to-rail turns—plus, the thinner rails will make it easier for you to keep an edge in the face of a wave. Perfect for a guy your size.” I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It is pretty, though. For someone to put so much time into it, I don’t doubt it rides fine.” I was noting the O near the nose, just beneath the shark. There was the brand name, Vector, imposed upon a line drawing of a globe. The globe was crosshatched with lines of latitude and longitude. Still admiring the surfboard, I added, “But I can’t accept something like this. It’s so nice, I’d be afraid to take it near the water.” “Dude, it’s a present. You’ve gotta accept it. And she’s built to ride, not hang on the wall.” “Why a present? This thing had to cost a mint. What’s the occasion?” Tomlinson gave a regal wave of dismissal: Don’t be crass by mentioning the cost. “You have a birthday coming up, young man.” “No ... Actually, it’s way past.” “So I forgot.” “No, you didn’t forget. You don’t recall the party? The night the fishing guides went skinny-dipping and scared off that group of nice tourist ladies? You gave me a little bag of marijuana. What you did forget is that I don’t smoke, ever.” Tomlinson had an index

I took one look at that alien head and started to panic again. I mean, how could I trust a guy with an alien head on his face? Pushing my way back to the bathroom for another cry session, I said to him, “Jimmy, I don’t think I can do this. I mean, making PB&Js is kid stuff. I’d be like the best superhero ever for a birthday party. Those little ankle biters could just eat sandwiches and smoosh them in each other’s faces the whole time.” Jimmy looked at me blankly. Maybe “ankle biters” reminded him too much of his little brother, Randy the Terror. “But beating a super villain?” I continued, shaking my head. “He’s gonna turn me into a bean burrito!” Jimmy suddenly snapped back to reality. “I love bean burritos,” he said. “Exactly,” I said. “He’ll turn me into a burrito, and you can eat it. Case closed.” “You know, PB&J, all this burrito talk is making me thirsty.” So we walked to the kitchen to find some juice. My mom and dad were watching the morning news in the living room. “Hey, guys!” They were both talking in high voices and had big smiles on their faces, like actors in a terrible show for babies. There was an awkward pause. Jimmy tripped on the back of my shoe and hit the kitchen counter. As he fell to the ground again, he started making a strange mooing sound. Suddenly, Mom spoke up. Her voice was cracked and high-pitched. From my ten years of experience with Mom, she was also about to start crying at any second—and I’m talking thunderstorm tears, not just a light cry like my bathroom time. I braced for the worst and considered grabbing an umbrella.

Book Overview of Ten Years A Ward by Ten Years A Ward Ten Years A Ward is a deeply emotional and compelling story about love, family, and inner turmoil. Written by [Author's Name], this novel delves into the complexities of growing up and grappling with feelings of forbidden love. If you’re looking for a heart-wrenching tale that explores themes of sacrifice, self-discovery, and emotional resilience, Ten Years A Ward is the book for you. In Ten Years A Ward, the protagonist faces a whirlwind of emotions while struggling to reconcile her love for her guardian, Ethan Hayes, and the boundary that separates them. From heart-wrenching moments of longing to unexpected twists, this book will leave you questioning the meaning of love, loyalty, and family ties. If you’re ready to immerse yourself in a narrative that tugs at your heartstrings, dive into Ten Years A Ward today!Read More… About the Author: Ten Years A Ward Ten Years A Ward is a celebrated writer known for their evocative storytelling and deep character exploration. With a passion for crafting emotionally charged narratives, brings Ten Years A Ward to life, drawing readers into a world full of complex relationships and untold emotions. Having written several bestsellers in the romance and emotional drama genres, [Author's Name]’s works are loved by readers worldwide. Ten Years A Ward is just one example of their ability to create compelling, heart-stopping drama that stays with you long after you turn the last page. [Author’s Name]’s knack for weaving emotional tension and complex characters together is unmatched. Ten Years A Ward is a testament to their skills as a storyteller. The Plot of Ten Years A Ward (Spoiler-Free) In Ten Years A Ward, the protagonist spends a decade quietly in love with her guardian, Ethan Hayes. Ethan took her in after her family fell apart, becoming her protector and the only person she could rely on. Over the years, their bond deepens, and she begins to develop feelings for him that go far beyond familial affection. On her eighteenth birthday, she finally decides to confess her love to Ethan, hoping for a future where they could be more than guardian and ward. But what she didn't anticipate was Ethan's violent reaction—one that leaves her questioning everything she thought she knew about their relationship. I that

The birdhouse, the same one. Mendel and I had cobbled it together one midnight out of bits of spare timber. Mendel, under my slightly drunken guidance, had embellished it with a pokerwork plaque declaring No bird turned away. And there it stood, as proud and upright as on the birthday it had celebrated.

FABULOVE DISCOUNT CODE: TAKE10 – SAVE UP TO 50% OFF IN 2025! Looking for the perfect piece of jewelry, a meaningful gift, or a special keepsake for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, or any important moment? Fabulove is offering one of the biggest deals of 2025, with selected products discounted up to 50%, and when you apply Fabulove discount code: TAKE10, you get an extra 10% OFF—making your savings even bigger! Shop now on fabulove.co and turn every moment into something unforgettable with beautifully designed, heartfelt jewelry and gifts. About the Fabulove Discount Code: TAKE10 — Extra Savings for Every Customer The Fabulove discount code: TAKE10 is your golden ticket to maximize savings. ✔ Products on the website are already discounted up to 40–50% ✔ When you apply Fabulove discount code: TAKE10, you save an additional 10% ✔ Total savings can reach UP TO 50% on selected items ✔ Works for every order on fabulove.co This is a limited-time offer, so make sure you always apply Fabulove discount code: TAKE10 at checkout!

one day, someone will look at me and watch their whole life ignite behind their eyes. their breath will stall in their throat, swallowing ache like a fallen star; like lungs forgetting what to do with air. their heart will stop for a fraction of a second, and that fraction will stretch into a silence so vast it feels prehistoric; wide and unbearable as an eternity. and then it will race, faster than thunder finding ground, faster than light trying to outrun itself. their palms will turn cold, fingers trembling without permission as if they’ve touched voltage, their limbs will forget gravity, and time will hesitate, pausing to witness it - the exact moment they fall in love with me and in that fracture of a second, they will fall. they will look at me and know, not hope or guess but know in the marrow of their bones and in their soul that ages ago, that before the first atom split open, before the sky learned how to hold blue, before dinosaurs burned into fossils, before language found a tongue, before earth gathered dust into gravity, and humanity mistook itself for something permanent, we had already happened. they will know that us, colliding with all our atoms and cosmos is no coincidence; that we were inevitable, in all of the universes and in all our lifetimes; not because fate whispered, but in the quiet, cellular way that recognition works- like something long separated clicking back into place. like it's a promise, set across timelines, before the galaxy even knew it would come to exist and when the universe tore itself apart in the big bang, it was not chaos but a rehearsal and they will feel it: the red string pulled taut across galaxies, threaded through our ribcages and wrists, through lifetimes we do not remember but ache for anyway. and when they touch me, the collision will be like magnets snapping together, hungry for just one touch metal against metal, body against body, lips against lips. sparks spelling something older than god. in that very moment, they will understand that this is not just love or mere affection; that this isn't luck or coincidence but gravity recognizing its own law. this is two particles separated by eternity snapping back into alignment. it is something that would have occurred in any version of existence. in every universe. in every lifetime. in every possible arrangement of matter. a curse and a blessing braided together. a life sentence that feels heavenly even when it burns. and even if none of it had happened— if there had been no explosion, no earth, no evolution; we still would have found a form, like planets and their moons; like a tree and its branches, like the pulse and vein. and when everything ends, when stars cool and light forgets its purpose, when the universe folds in on itself like a dying lung; when galaxies extinguish like Birthday candles, when time collapses and all of it ceases to exist, we will remain. not as bodies or memories; not as names engraved on tombstones; all of it except us. we will remain as inevitability as the sentence written before time, and still being served long after time is gone. just us, still finding each other, in whatever is left.