“They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never reopened or reread.”

“I knew something as I watched: almost everyone was saying goodbye to me. I was becoming one of the many little-girl-losts. They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never to be reopened or reread. And I could say goodbye to them, wish them well, bless them somehow for their good thoughts. A handshake in the street, a dropped item picked up and retrieved and handed back, or a friendly wave from the distant window, a nod, a smile, a moment when the eyes lock over the antics of a child.”

“The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.”

“But also I wanted him to go away and leave me be. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out”

“If I was aware I would have to tie laces I would not have been able to put my feet into socks.”

“On my way home from the junior high, I would sometimes stop at the edge of our property and watch my mother ride the ride-on mower, looping in and out among the pine trees, and I could remember then how she used to whistle in the mornings as she made her tea and how my father, rushing home on Thursdays, would bring her marigolds and her face would light up in yellowy in delight. They had been deeply, separately, wholly in love- apart from her children my mother could reclaim this love, but with them she began to drift. It was my father who grew toward us as the years went by; it was my mother who grew away. ~pg 153; love”

“How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?”