The indoctrination, the physical enforcement, the absolute unwillingness to tolerate dissent of any kind—all of these had been hallmarks of my mother’s upbringing, too. The fact that she was now in her fifties didn’t suddenly give her the freedom to throw off the shackles of those beliefs. If anything, it just meant that she’d had more years to marinate in them. She could no more decide to deny those ideas than she could spontaneously decide not to believe in the existence of gravity.
