You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25th everyone is worn out — physically worn out by weeks...
My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I’d begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in with walls. She was shrinking. Or maybe her sph...
Bruce decides to spend the family fortune on capes and crime labs and to fritter away his free time fighting crazy criminals. Now that's an out-of-the-box calling. What sort of person makes a life change like that without radical submission? Without ...
I felt like a disappointment. I believed I had let my family down. Clearly, I was a screw-up. I couldn’t do anything right. It seemed I hurt people without even trying. I didn’t know better, but obviously, that proved I was stupid. I was so blind...
He looked at Hector's list and told him that, thanks to a lot of studies and calculations, they'd shown that if you compared yourself to others and didn't find yourself wanting, if you had no money or health problems, if you had friends, a close-knit...
Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then...
A brick is a duplicate. It is a physical copy of the idea for a brick. And what’s the big idea? A brick represents unity, a notion of hey, let’s build something together. Like a house, for example. And after you help me build my house, I’ll use...
Most families around town only had a bottle of aspirin in their medicine cabinets. If you had the flu, you took an aspirin. If you had a toothache, you took an aspirin. If you were bitten by a snake, you took an aspirin. If you developed kidney probl...
For sense gratification, a man in the mode of passion wants some honor in society, or in the nation, and he wants to have a happy family, with nice children, wife and house. These are the products of the mode of passion. As long as one is hankering a...
Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to ...
The races are like America's children. White people are the firstborn, so they were Dad's favorite. Black people are the second kids, the abused ones, so they still hate Dad. Latinos are the third, caught in the middle and always trying to make peace...
Was James bipolar?” The tears returned, and I watched her battle them. “We don’t use that word in our family.” I stared at her for a moment. “Why not?” “Mum and Dad don’t believe in it.” She kept walking. “James was always … tro...
He turned to Matt and gave a huge smile, one hand on her withers. James reached out and pulled Matt to him, and they stood there in a little circle. It felt disconcertingly like… a family reunion. Matt turned away from James‟s bright smile and lo...
The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members d...
A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life—the nation, the city, the ...
You have no understanding of the warrior code at all. What you've done here proves it. You've risked the lives of young kits... by leaving them alone here. Anything could have happened to them. They could have been lost. They could have died. My kits...
She helped the hunter with the cooking as a husband helps his wife: when he had gone out to hunt and left something to stew, she would take the pot off the fire. But she never knew when to take it off; sometimes it was cooked to pieces, and she never...
Before I can say , I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what ...
Your Barney?” Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “Yours?” “He’s mine all right!” Claire replied. “Everyone in this family belongs to everyone else – belongs with everyone else, rather. I’ve looked after him for a year now – ironed his shi...
No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it’s own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kin...
I saw Dad's eyes widen just a fraction when he heard my voice catch. He glanced at me but quickly turned away. He didn't want me to see his reaction, but I did, and I'll never forget it. In that brief glimpse, I could see what he was thinking behind ...
