Defending Jacob

by William Landay

eventually our relationship would wither to a few visits a year on holidays and summer weekends. I could not quite imagine it. What was I if not Jacob’s father?

A good marriage drags a long tail of memory behind it. A single word or gesture, a tone of voice can conjure up so many remembrances.

good friendships require complementary personalities, not identical ones.

At some point as adults we cease to be our parents’ children and we become our children’s parents instead.

A liberal, it turns out, is a conservative who’s been indicted.

no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed—but after all, we were children.

“I look back on us then and I see we weren’t ready at all. I mean, no one ever is, right? We were kids. I don’t care how old we were; we were kids. And we were clueless and we were scared shitless, like all new parents. And I don’t know, maybe we made mistakes.”

have an idea that this is what enduring love really means. Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known.

This is the best thing about men’s friendships: most any awkwardness can be ignored by mutual agreement and, true connection being unimaginable, you can get on with the easier business of parallel living.

Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you.