Larger Than Life

by Jodi Picoult

In addition to the five elephants from this herd who were slaughtered, there are more who ran frantically from the poachers—and who no longer have a matriarch to lead them to food and water, to steer them away from danger. When the matriarch is gone, so is the herd’s collective memory.

Suddenly, my mind went blank. I could not remember a single word; I couldn’t find the familiar landmark of the next sentence. My breathing became the heartbeat of the world.

Then my mother cleared her throat. My chin jerked up, and our eyes locked. For a moment there was no one else there with us—just me with my flaming cheeks, and her, with disappointment tugging at the corners of her mouth. Then, gradually, I started to hear sounds. My heart thudding. The tick of my teacher’s watch. The creak of chairs, as other parents shifted uncomfortably in the silence.

Kids ran to their parents, whose arms folded tight around them like the wings of giant birds.

The matriarch is a knot that holds together a rope made of many strings. Cut the rope below the knot, and it unravels.

The bond between a mother and a child weighed nothing on a scale; it took up no room in a test tube. But most of us would have a hard time saying it didn’t exist.

There is a reason people say being a mother is the hardest job in the world: You do not sleep and you do not get vacation time. You do not leave your work on your desk at the end of the day. Your briefcase is your heart, and you are rifling through it constantly. Your office is as wide as the world, and your punch card is measured not in hours but in a lifetime.

The calf scrambled beneath the safe haven of his mother. When you are truly, deeply scared, that’s the only place you want to be.

You’re a fixer, Grant mused. You’re also a colossal pain in the ass. The thing is, it’s the pains in the ass that change the world.