The Frozen River

by Ariel Lawhon

Like all mothers, I have long since mastered the art of nursing joy at one breast and grief at the other.

Oh, how faint grows the heart of man when he plucks it—still beating—from his chest and lays it at the foot of a woman.

I want the world to remember that small acts, done in love, matter every bit as much as the ones that make the newspaper and the history books.