3 Willows (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants)

by Ann Brashares

Maybe we tried so hard to be like the Sisterhood because it was easy for them and we wanted it to be easy for us. Because they were lucky and we wanted to be lucky too. They had wonder, and we didn’t have any.

We looked for the magic, but we didn’t find it. We waited for the magic, but it didn’t find us.

What was this thing, hiking? she wondered. Why did people like it so much? Was it really anything more than just kind of walking along? It seemed to her that there should be more to it than just walking along in order for it to deserve its own name and all this devotion and so much gear.

Hiking was walking for nothing. It was walking for nothing to nowhere and for no reason.

In Ghana most people speak at least two or three languages.

It is said that the sound of wind through willow trees is the whispering of fairies into the poet’s ear.

Sometimes it took an absence to make a person look.

She felt empty and small, and she liked that feeling. You spent your whole childhood getting bigger. You spent the whole time getting carried less, getting held less, until it was never. There was a strange pleasure in getting smaller instead of bigger for once, in feeling like you could also go backward if you needed to.

Polly often thought Dia had been happier as an unsuccessful artist than she was as a successful one.

“What’s there to be good at? You just stand around trying to look a certain way. I think there’s better use for your talents. I really do.”

Because sticking to no took a lot more energy than saying yes. That was the factor Polly counted on again and again. Because her mother had little will, and Polly had almost nothing else.

the particular kind of tiredness you got from being outside all day. It was a nice kind of tiredness, languid rather than grumpy.

Part of being miserable was not caring as much what happened to you or who said what.

Love didn’t necessarily look the way you expected it to.

The willow’s sap is watery and flows freely. Some believe that proximity to the tree gives access to blocked emotions, to grief and loss.

Reality was stubborn for sure, but it was large and it had possibilities. It was a sweet relief when you let it come.

opened