Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

No one ever tells you, when you are young, that your entire personality can change—will change—as you grow older. The twenty-five-year-old Kelly McLaughlin is a completely different woman from the fifty-six-year-old Kelly Leary.

I wonder if this is true.

It is the long, thin, thorny end of the rose.

But it is always clear that he has no idea what having a family really means.

During our childhood the family gatherings were very different. Papa was still alive, of course. Gram was young and energetic. Possibility was in the air for all of us.

I just want to make it out of this room alive, away from my burning-hot sister and my frozen uncle and the rest of these strange characters who share my history and my holidays and my genes.

It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love me, because she does. That’s why this hurts so much now. I have behaved in a way no daughter of hers would ever behave, and that has forced her to face the reality that she does not know me. This was not pleasant for either one of us.

And Gracie doesn't know, or want to know, her mother either.

My features had a hard, separate look to them, as if they each belonged on a different face but were fixed so firmly where they were that there was no hope of rearrangement or change.

Lila

And medicine was fascinating, a great match, at least at first. It was a natural fit for my brain. But now the book-learning portion was over, and suddenly medicine felt like a horse I’d borrowed that didn’t like me and was doing its damnedest to buck me off.

started to change shortly after Pat left, when he started to say odd things, and stopped playing with the other little boys, I was not completely surprised. I had failed at holding my family together. I should have fought for Pat. I should have noticed my baby girl’s symptoms earlier. I should have done something, anything, to bring my twins into the world whole and full of breath. I should have found a way to stop these cracks from forming. I should have kept everyone together, and safe. I feel tears, which I recognize in disgust as self-pity, push at the backs of my eyes. To shake away that sensation I heave myself up on my elbow. I breathe there for a moment until my vision

Heartbreaking and so true of mothers

You thought you could control everything, and make happy endings all on your own. You taught your children that that was what was expected of them. How could you do that? They thought they had to make their own lives right with no help or good luck or charity, and that if anything went wrong, it was their own fault. Look at all the guilty faces in this room. For heaven’s sakes. They all think they’ve failed you, and just plain failed life.