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“Anyone who runs away from his age is running away from himself,”
Elias showed her that in the withered bodies of the aged, there was a whole world, the memory of love and accrued wisdom and acceptance of things to come.
“When you’re old,” he said sagely, “you don’t stop laughing, but when you stop laughing, you grow old.
“No one can tell you to stop,” she told Lila. “Cry as long as you can.”
“The things we keep hidden are a terrible burden and come with a price,”
“Troubles come uninvited,” the woman said, “but we have to bring happiness ourselves.”
The sweet, soft babies put up for adoption this year would come to her office eighteen years from now to open their files, and everything that had been kept from them all that time would be revealed: parents’ names, addresses, countries of origin, photographs, and even, on occasion, a letter from the abandoning parent to the abandoned child.
Words were meant to be spoken from one’s heart and heard in black and white, words were meant to drip pleasant drops, but they could also be a barrage of glass shards. Words can destroy.
