Because life is a symphony it must have its C Minor. Days there be when we hear only a discord of sharps and flats, and we wonder whether harmony will ever be restored. On other days we hear only an ominous, deep strain which seems to say that hope i...
This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, of...
Enrollments in American colleges tripled between 1955 and 1970, 250% in the Soviet Union, 400% in France, and more than 200% in China by 1965. Gaddis writes, "What governments failed to foresee was that more young people, plus, more education, when c...
The dilemma I was faced with was one every parent faces sooner or later: you want to defend your child, of course; you stand up for your child, but you mustn't do it all too vehemently, and above all not too eloquently - you mustn't drive anyone into...
He believed he understood, for the first time, why people say life is a dream: if you live long enough, the events of a lifetime, like the events of a dream, cannot be communicated, simply because they are of no interest to anyone. Human beings thems...
And this is what living next to a waterfall is like, Safran. Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husban...
Now, through an act as simple as walking across a stage and collecting an empty plastic folder representing a degree, our stock had plummeted to nothing, the wretched leavings of some cosmic Ponzi scheme. A lifetime's worth of planning and training a...
The key is to understand that our children don't belong to us—they belong to God. Our goal as parents must not be limited by our own vision. I am a finite, sinful, selfish man. Why would I want to plan out my children's future when I can entrust th...
(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthoo...
True names,” said September wonderingly. “These are all true names. Like, when your parents call you to dinner and you don’t come and they call again but you still don’t come, and they call you by all your names together, and then, of course,...
Whether our caretaker was our mom, dad, uncle, aunt, grandparent, foster parent, or sibling, our blueprint of what a relationship is supposed to look like is drafted by what we observed from our caretaker’s relationship. If our caretaker took their...
THERE WAS ALWAYS a boy in your life that common sense and the prayers of parents told you to stay away from: fast talker, fast car, and fast hands. He was the boy your father kept a loaded shotgun by the door for and met on the front porch if he ever...
Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sa...
He [Ranger] stopped in front of my parents' house, and we both looked to the door. My mother and my grandmother were standing there, watching us. "I'm not sure I feel comfortable about the way your grandma looks at me," Ranger said. [Stephanie] "She ...
But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at eas...
I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, liv...
My parents say you’re no good, Elijah.” I exhaled and killed the cigarette in the grass. Laughing, Eli’s eyes went to my lips and his hands touched my bare midriff. “Really? And what do you say?” He had brought his lips so close to mine tha...
You don't need to retire to a cloister or the desert for years on end to experience a true dark night; you don't even have to be pursuing any particular "spiritual" path. Raising a challenged child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is...
Soon I was weeping---for the reservists who put their entire lives on hold when called to duty, for the military mothers who had to keep their families together all alone, for the parents, spouses, sons, and daughters who were beset with worry, for M...
Where were me parents? Where were Becky? I felt so alone, so lost that I could not see. By that I mean, everything round me were a blur, everything inside me were a blur of fear and shock. I heard meself crying and moaning, My oh my, my oh my . . . I...
How can families harm us when they love us? Very easily, unfortunately. Most of us overlook one important fact when we think love is enough: Love and respect aren't the same thing. Love is fusion. As a baby, you belong to your parents, you're extensi...
