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Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? Isaiah 45:9
“Momma, your lunch is moving around, or else you have gas.” Laughter made her blue eyes sparkle, and she told me to guess again. Her voice was sweet and concerned as she told us her news. “Darlings, I’m going to have a baby in early May.
I soon learned that parents have room in their hearts for more than two children, and I had room in my heart to love them, too—even
It’s not good to be alone when you feel bereft. It’s better to be with people and share your grief, and not keep it locked up inside.”
“you must accept the truth. You are not to find solace in pretending.
As for us, we’ll make do the best we can without him—and that doesn’t mean escaping reality by not facing up to it.”
We were four children stumbling around in the broken pieces of our grief and loss.
You can’t live without money. It’s not love that makes the world go ’round—it’s money.
nor will you seek to show signs of affection toward me, nor hope to gain my friendship, nor my pity, nor my love, nor my compassion. All of that is impossible. Neither your grandfather nor myself can allow ourselves to feel anything for what is not wholesome.”
Lunch without cookies was an abysmal thing.
We had lost our father, our home, our friends and our possessions. That night I no longer believed that God was the perfect judge. So, in a way, I lost God too.
“So you see, children, this house can be hard and relentless in dealing with those who disobey and break our rules. We will dole out food, drink, and shelter, but never kindness, sympathy or love. It’s impossible to feel anything but revulsion for what is not wholesome.
Yes, she wanted to make us undone that night, when we were young, innocent, trusting, having known only the sweetest part of living. She wanted to wither our souls and shrivel us small and dry, perhaps never to feel pride again.
To believe in God is a good thing, a right thing. But when you reinforce your belief with words you take from the Old Testament that you seek out, and interpret in the ways that suit your needs best, that is hypocrisy,
You had to have love or you withered away and died.
People make the rules of society, not God.
I’m not going to try and justify what we did, for we do have to abide by the laws of our own society. That society believes closely related men and women should not marry, for if they do, they can produce children who are mentally or physically less than perfect. But who is perfect?”
So if God had wanted to punish us, he had four chances to give us deformed or mentally retarded children. Instead, he gave us the very best. So never let your grandmother or anyone else convince you that you are less than competent, less than worthy, or less than wholly pleasing in God’s eyes. If there was a sin committed, it was the sin of your parents, not yours.
Keep remembering what you had in Gladstone—hold on to that. Keep believing in yourselves, and in me, and in your father. Even if he is dead, keep on loving and respecting him. He deserves that. He tried so hard to be a good parent. I don’t think there are many men who care as much as he did.”
I believe God is not narrow-minded and bigoted—not
“Love doesn’t always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will.”
“I want you to repeat after me: We are perfect children. Mentally, physically, emotionally, we are wholesome, and godly in every way possible. We have as much right to live, love, and enjoy life as any other children on this earth.”
Never would I become so dependent on a man I couldn’t make my way in the world, no matter what cruel blow life delivered!
To love anything once extremely well made you vulnerable to another loving attack.
Snide thoughts came and told me we were unwanted, locked up . . . Devil’s spawn. Those thoughts wanted to lounge around in my head and make me miserable. I had to find a way to drive them out.
All the days dragged by. Monotonously. What did you do with time when you had it in superabundance? Where did you put your eyes when you had already seen everything? What direction should your thoughts take, when daydreams could lead you into so much trouble?
Job, 32:9—Great men are not always wise.”
It was the doubts and the fears, the hopes and expectations that kept us so in suspense, waiting, waiting—and we were no closer to being let out and taken downstairs.
“Does Momma still like us?” Now, that was a question to keep me awake at night.
“Where have you been?” I demanded in an ugly tone. What right did she have to be enjoying herself when we were locked away, and kept from doing the youthful things that were our right?
since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.
It would take a very special man to fill his shoes, and so far I haven’t met one who measures up to even his outgrown socks.”
Chris colored all his animals realistically. I decorated mine with polka-dots, gingham checks, plaids, and put lace-edged pockets on the laying hens.
“Christopher,” I said coolly, “when Cory and I want to know about a snail’s tubular intestines, we’ll send you a telegram, and please go sit on a tack and wait for it.”
I colored patience gray, hung over with black clouds. I colored hope yellow, just like that sun we could see for a few short morning hours.
When you grow up, and have a million adult things to do, you forget how long a day can be for a child.
Still, we were young, and hope has strong roots in the young, right down to their toes, and when we entered the attic and saw our growing garden, we could laugh, and pretend. After all, we were making our mark in the world. We were making something beautiful out of what had been drab and ugly.
Good golly, even the rich had to be stingy.
“Fool! Never wait on a man! Make him wait on himself.
Love . . . I put so much faith in it. Truth . . . I kept believing it falls always from the lips of the one you love and trust the most. Faith . . . it’s all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?
Why was it I never realized when I was able to run wild and free that I was experiencing happiness? Why did I think back then, that happiness was always just ahead in the future, when I would be an adult, able to make my own decisions, go my own way, be my own person? Why had it seemed that being a child was never enough? Why had I thought that happiness reserved itself for those grown to full size?
I’ll convince myself if I can’t be a doctor, then I won’t want to be anything else, or want anything more that money can buy!” He said that so intensely. I wanted to be a prima ballerina, though I would settle for something else.
“Dance, Ballerina, dance, and do your pirouette In rhythm with your aching heart, Dance, Ballerina, dance, you mustn’t once forget A dancer has to dance the part, Once you said his love must wait its turn, You wanted fame instead, I guess that’s your concern, We live and learn . . . and love is gone, Ballerina, gone . . .”
I’d always been dancing. There wasn’t any kind of dance I couldn’t do, and didn’t want to do.
That’s the way he said it, dead flat, and dead serious. He would never let anyone force him to do anything that didn’t fit his image of himself, and in a way I liked him for being what he was, strong, resolute, determined to be his own person, even if his kind of person had long ago gone out of style.
And I wanted him brilliant, or I might not respect him. Before I accepted his diamond engagement ring, I’d sit him down to play games, and if I won time and again, I’d smile, shake my head, and tell him to take his ring back to the store.
Ten years I aged in ten minutes.
Our happy time would come the day we left this room and went downstairs to attend a funeral.
He smiled at me disarmingly, and even kissed my cheeks. And, boy, if good food could do that for a man, I was all for learning gourmet cooking.
Being a parent wasn’t as easy as I used to presume, nor was it such a delight.
