She had been everyone’s model, everyone’s helper, the supreme exemplar. Out of her starched apron pockets came sugar cubes wrapped in paper and linen handkerchiefs rustling like doves. She was the Snow Queen. She stood for certainty — in summer the first ripening cherry, in autumn the thud of falling chestnuts, the golden roast pumpkin of winter, and, in spring, the first bud on the hedgerow. Emerence was pure and incorruptible, the better self that each and every one of us aspired to be. With her permanently veiled forehead and her face that was tranquil as a lake, she asked nothing from
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