Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

knowledge is not itself evil, it is only the use to which one puts it that may imperil the soul.

God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother’s heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so.

My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go.

I knew that it was true that fear of losing him had marched beside that love, every moment of the short time I had him with me.

It is a great thing to be young and to live without pain. And yet it is a blessing few of us count until we lose it.