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Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual—if one thinks about it, it’s really just a thing that was supposed to happen.
“They say that if you take in a person he will betray you, and if you take in a dog he will pay you back. I think the dog went in my place.”
There’s always the right time to say something.… I lived my life without talking to your mom. Or I missed the chance, or I assumed she would know. Now I feel like I could say anything and everything but there’s nobody to listen to me.
Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong.
A smile doesn’t cost you any money.
A house is alive only when there are people living in it, brushing against it, staying in it.
Was I a good daughter? Could I do the kind of things for my kids she did for me?
She didn’t have the opportunity to pursue her dreams and, all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn’t do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom’s dreams?
Do you think we’ll be able to be with her again, even if it’s just for one day? Do you think I’ll be given the time to understand Mom and hear her stories and console her for her old dreams that are buried somewhere in the pages of time? If I’m given even a few hours, I’m going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom’s life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her.
Was Mom unable to say that she was in pain, pushed aside by Father’s illnesses? Because she took care of everyone in the family, Mom was someone who couldn’t be sick.
Only after Mom went missing did you realize that her stories were piled inside you, in endless stacks. Mom’s everyday life used to go on in a repeating loop, without a break. Her everyday words, which you didn’t think deeply about and sometimes dismissed as useless when she was with you, awoke in your heart, creating tidal waves.
