For My Daughters

by Barbara Delinsky

But was one’s will ever truly free? Were there ever times in any responsible person’s life when choices could be made without a thought to past or future?

for in leaving Will I had sentenced myself to a life devoid of emotion. That was what I now sought to correct.

much as she begrudged Ginny’s performance as a mother, the fact of her aging was unsettling. “Seventy is getting up there.”

We assumed that with older came wiser, but it wasn’t always so. As often as not, age brought an understanding of one’s very lack of wisdom.

But I kept waking up, a little older and slower of body each day, a little more aware that life was a double-edged sword. Those of us who were blessed with longevity were the ones who would suffer the approach of death.

seeing her mother laugh and cry, raise her voice, speak of passion and romance—it must have been even more so for Ginny. Unburdening one’s soul was heavy stuff. And Ginny wasn’t young.