Caim > Recent Status Updates

“There is no good and evil, only healed and broken,” Conrad, like to say when Nakia was growing up. It was his way of priming her to forgive, to build instead of burn bridges. But this is generosity, this grace, could it be extended to machines?

Whew! For these two pages alone (247-248) warrants a reread! Goodness! I feel dizzy with symbolism, cadence, lyrics and longing.

“Her mind had not fully caught up to the rest of what was happening. Of being a protester, somehow an agitator, of being at the whim of giant anonymous Robo trucks, of being trapped, a fatal distance above hard , unforgiving concrete. She had never thought it practical to put her body on the line for someone else’s.”

Oh, wow… I didn’t expect this to be the cause of Nakia’s demise.

“Even now, with her job, with her girls, with Warren and the church to bolster her, there were night she felt like every edifice she’d propped up to separate her from the elements, the wind blasted outside of aloneness, could crumble, and she’d have nothing but her own uncovered self to brace against it. it might not take much for her to end up in the wilderness once again.

“She was only now beginning to understand how much Sherelle’s death had left her feeling exposed. She had been thrust into the wilderness of adult life, frog march into a deep, hard to navigate forest of decisions and failure, and hurt, sheltered by Nolan in name only.”

This portion of the book is extremely poetic. I wonder will the author ever write simply how Nakia died…

“Adults like to knowingly, treat you any kind of way and only get contrite about it when you said enough is enough.”

“But was it a grudge if the other person had earned it, or when she simply needed some time to warm up to them again? She could forgive easily enough, but it took time for her to forget. Motherhood had required her to let all kinds of slides and minor humiliations roll off her back—when it came to the girls. Adults were different.“

“A time capsule of wild hope, almost painful to look back on now.”

YUP.

Oh wow! That’s deep!

The “two under”: “ that I love my children and that I don’t wanna be here.”

I don’t even have children and I felt how mentally taxing this must feel!

“But beyond the physical, she simply couldn’t see a way out of being the default parent. Morris would complete any task she gave him, but he had not yet figured out how to anticipate what needed to be done so that she did not have to be the task manager, which was its own mental load.”

“Two under two. Too under, too. To undertow. A word joke that hadn’t gotten old. The shades were drawn; the sun was out, but what was sun when nighttime and daytime made no difference?”

“Had anyone ever seen such a beautiful, radiant jubilant, dead -tired, wrung-out bride?”

“The glamorous life” comes up again, but in contrast to the ubiquitous housing insecurity issues in LA

“Without Nolan, there was no one left to expect or require Danielle to do right by Desiree, to guilt her into shouldering the burden of sisterhood. What was sisterhood but a mutual agreement anyway? Blood didn't have to mean anything.”

Her sister, Danielle, is so cold… and distant.

“She was essentially naked in front of this person determined to treat her like a stranger, a murderer.”

"You know," Danielle said. "There's, like, a certain type of person who jumps at the opportunity to help someone die, and then there's everyone else. Most normal people wouldn't have done it. Most normal people would've talked him out of it. You need to figure out why you were so eager."

i’m close to halfway through the book and I couldn’t help but flip through just a bit to see what years and how the timeline would warp and expand over the next 165 pages. So far, there’s a lot to be uncovered about these complex relationships, and how these women are coming into their own weather through location, literature, or links to the past

“It’s like the ghost of danielle, a person who isn’t even dead has entered the room, is sitting on the far side of the couch.”

YUP!

“Visiting him as been a reprieve from this constant remembering.”

Until the very relative Desiree still has to hold on to, in this silent third wheel of her new situationship.

Now THIS book should’ve been called “The Three of Us”!

“Their eyes met for the briefest moment, and on her face was that familiar disappointment… her hands on her Bible and never free for him to try to hold. But he didn’t want to try. He’d once again failed a test, fallen short of her expectations, only this time he had no desire to be absolved.”

YIKES!

“Maybe it doesn’t matter who they share in their past, she thinks, maybe the only thing that matters is what happens next.”

If you share a bf with your sister, then that absolutely matters…

“She wants to tell him that sometimes sunshine can be cruel. That cloudy days are a reprieve, and the problem with LA, and maybe even the whole Southwest, is that inevitably the light breaks through, makes the day the same as all others, even when it has no right to such uniformity. Some days feel dark and the sky should allow for this, but it rarely does out there. She'd needed more empathetic weather…”

This is lowdown to be messing with your sister’s ex bf…