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“There comes a time in every man’s life,” he’d said in the halting, ghostly voice his stroke had left him, “when he stops looking forward and starts looking back.”
No use rocking the boat—you only take on more water.”
Our skin, our hair, and our eyes are simply the shell that surrounds our soul, and our soul is who we are. What counts is on the inside.”
“People make fun of things they don’t understand.”
“Time is wicked. It comes and goes like a thief in the night, stealing our youth, our beauty, and our bodies.” I had watched Grandma O’Malley, a proud and simple woman, shrink and wrinkle and turn white over the years. But we expect that of our grandparents. Not our parents. For some reason, we think our parents will never grow old, perhaps because when they do, we are forced to acknowledge that we will one day grow old, and we face our own mortality.
Her continued devotion in the face of all that had happened amazed me, but at this point I had concluded that I no longer shared her faith in a God who controlled the universe like a puppet master pulling and tugging strings and making us all dance.
The strangest part was that I realized that by forgiving them all, I had forgiven myself.
He was offering me the gift of perspective. My father was telling me that while we tend to remember the dramatic incidents that change history—Armstrong’s walk on the moon, Nixon’s resignation, and the Loma Prieta earthquake—we live for the quiet, intimate moments that mark not our calendars but our hearts:
