The Things We Cannot Say

by Kelly Rimmer

the imagery it inspires of padded cell institutions and children left behind. The very sound of it makes me see red.

“One day, when this war is over, you’ll look back and with the passing of time, these things that right now feel like unfair deceptions will seem like mercies,”

It’s not anything Wade does or says that makes me feel that way. Sometimes I wonder if I’d feel this uncomfortable about our situation if I’d set out to be a stay-at-home mom. Instead, that life just kind of happened to me, and now there are some days when this beautiful home is a little like a gilded cage. “Mommy.”

Life has a way of shattering our expectations, of leaving our hopes in pieces without explanation. But when there’s love in a family, the fragments left behind from our shattered dreams can always be pulled together again, even if the end result is a mosaic.

Wade will always want to push Eddie out of his comfort zone, and I’ll always want to provide him security and structure—but in the push-and-pull of our very different approaches, we’re achieving some kind of delicate balance.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, our grandparents’ decisions made in wartime changed our lives.

History’s most important lessons can be difficult to confront and even harder to share—but we are all richer when those lessons persist through generations. Perhaps more than ever, we need the wisdom our forebears gleaned

through blood, sweat and more than their share of tears.