“She smiled and feigned enthusiasm, although she cared little for the game. Sometimes that's what you did for the people you loved.”

“That's your mom, right?" Pathik smiled. "She looks nicer than she did when she was dragging you away the other night.”

“It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”

“You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.”

“She did the best that we could be; she was perfectly charming and perfectly loving. She was a dream. And she was the kind of dream that you remember when you wake up smiling.”

“Love SorrowLove sorrow. She is yours now, and you musttake care of what has beengiven. Brush her hair, help herinto her little coat, hold her hand,especially when crossing a street. For, think,what if you should lose her? Then you would besorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessnesswould be yours. Take care, touchher forehead that she feel herself not soutterly alone. And smile, that she does notaltogether forget the world before the lesson.Have patience in abundance. And do notever lie or ever leave her even for a momentby herself, which is to say, possibly, again,abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.And amazing things can happen. And you may see,as the two of you gowalking together in the morning light, howlittle by little she relaxes; she looks about her;she begins to grow.”