Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

It proves that even when the worst thing imaginable happens, the individuals involved still survive.

because my mother, like her own mother, never speaks of anything important.

I believe that you can learn from history. Pay attention to the mistakes that were made before you, and don’t repeat them.

doesn’t matter if they are in the hospital because their ten-year-old is having his tonsils out or because their father is having an emergency triple bypass. The hysteria is always there. I see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. People know that while they are at the hospital someone in the rooms around them is bound to die, and they seem to believe that if they speak loudly and often and shed tears, there will be a better chance of their loved one being spared.

It will not occur to them that I am just being honest. Or maybe Kelly did recognize that and that was what scared her. I’m not sure any child really wants to know their parent, or vice versa. Maybe that knowledge and that truth are too much.

a baby is not an answer to anything. Don’t make that mistake. Don’t fall into that trap. Keep this in mind: A baby is simply, and decisively, and irreversibly, a baby. To give birth to a child is to take on the responsibility of another human life.

I came to realize that I had spent my life trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be: a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother. I had done nothing to feed my soul, nothing to set myself free.

No one ever tells you, when you are young, that your entire personality can change—will change—as you grow older.

The past and the present are each important. They share equal weight, don’t they? That’s why it is so hard to make decisions. There is always so much to consider.

I know what I don’t believe in, though. Isn’t that something? I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in destiny. I think that life is made up of random events. I don’t think there is a point to any individual’s existence. You aren’t put on this earth for any one reason. And I don’t believe in soul mates. People are drawn together due to pheromones and physical attraction and they choose whether to do the work to stay together or not. I don’t believe in couples staying together for the kids.

Then the camera moves in for a close-up on the woman’s vagina, which also looks angry, red and gaping, stretched well beyond reasonable limits by this baby whose head is clearly far too big to make its way out of the available exit. It looks, frankly, like a tragedy waiting to happen, death to both mother and child.