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2ae55d5
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unrequited love is the best kind. But I can tell you with certainty, Robbie, that the other kind of love, the kind I received from your father for more than two decades, is far more necessary.
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Jan Ellison |
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a16b408
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Most never know the condition exists, because the single kidney grows large enough to accommodate
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Jan Ellison |
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775f5e4
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Confessions. For whose benefit besides one's own?
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Jan Ellison |
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8dc944a
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we found a room in a motel close to the hospital, the Mermaid Inn, a pink stucco affliction squeezed between a Starbucks and an independent bookstore.
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Jan Ellison |
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a8c0324
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The mania had given her a reckless invincibility, as drinking used to give me, a reckless certainty that she could, and should, get what she wanted at any cost. And
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Jan Ellison |
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65ebaa2
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They say the human body can lose 50 percent of its body parts and survive. But it depends on which parts, and which body.
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Jan Ellison |
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7c87f16
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The alliance of my father and brother and me seemed to trump normal adolescent activities. I was more often at home than out with my friends, and any entanglements I had with boys, I kept secret. My entanglements never went very far, anyway. I wasn't afraid of the sin of it, or of getting pregnant; I was afraid the main event--sex--would not be any good, and I would have to pretend it had been. Or I was afraid that when the moment arrived, ..
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Jan Ellison |
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68a3e2a
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He somehow knew it was more important to be reassuring, to seem to be in command of the situation, than to be right. And he was always willing to give in when he was found out to be wrong. The
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Jan Ellison |
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7069437
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What happens to a marriage? A persistent failure of kindness, triggered at first, at least in my case, by the inequities of raising children, the sacrifices that take a woman by surprise and that she expects to be matched by her mate but that biology ensures cannot be. Anything could set me off. Any innocuous habit or slight or oversight. The way your father left the lights of the house blazing, day and night. The way he could become so dis..
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Jan Ellison |
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ba0e5b9
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I felt not jealousy so much as shame for not understanding the bond between them. The bond that was stalwart in the face of complacency and cruelty and wandering desire. The habit of each other that was the bedrock upon which they'd sunk the foundation of their mutual existence--and upon which they were standing, still. I
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Jan Ellison |
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2957b53
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I became a great internal shrug. All my organs gave way to the path of least resistance. I felt myself dislocating, but the dislocation did not have the expected result. Instead of removing me, it made me more present, more available, more pliable, more attuned.
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Jan Ellison |
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ff79aef
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I wanted that whole society frozen in revelry, and I wanted my feelings frozen, too. My life and all the things that had happened or might happen to me seemed distilled and poignant, and the evenings themselves timeless and meaningful. I was no longer self-conscious or afraid. I could say anything, and often did.
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Jan Ellison |
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32ca8b1
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perception is often loath to give up its stranglehold on the mind
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Jan Ellison |
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ee085e4
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When you seek it, you cannot find it." We"
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Jan Ellison |
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89d7406
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TO LAY. To lie. A lay. A lie. It's a versatile but tricky word, isn't it? To get the lay of the land. To lay down the law. To lay blame. To lie low. To lie down on the job. To let it lie. To lie down and ... Not
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Jan Ellison |
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63bc6d2
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Emme. Like the letter. Like an eclipse. A force of nature that keeps coming around, taking out the lights.
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Jan Ellison |
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60c7cdf
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How lucky I am that he turned up across the dance floor all those years ago and believed, then as now, that we were meant to build a life together.
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Jan Ellison |
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e742872
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Already I sensed that to claim him, to take something of him without asking, would be to drive him away. When
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Jan Ellison |
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c1ef399
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Confessions. For whose benefit besides one's own? T
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Jan Ellison |
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7848d63
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I suppose unrequited love is the hardest kind to shed because it is not really love at all. It is a half-love, and we are forever stomping around trying to get hold of the other half. W
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Jan Ellison |
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185be93
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Sunflowers face the sun all the time in the day even if the sun moves." They were not actually sunflowers--they were prince daisies--but I wasn't going to correct her. "Where did you learn that?" I asked her. "From Emme-and-Emme." Your father gave me a look. "That's weird," Polly said, bending down. "These two aren't facing the sun. They're facing away. They must be sick." "Maybe they think there's another sun," your father said. Polly look..
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Jan Ellison |
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d82d004
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I wondered why I had been so set on tall men. There were only three inches of height separating this man and me--if I turned around we would be almost eye to eye--and yet that felt exactly right. He
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Jan Ellison |
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cc1e363
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She let me go. Not that she could have stopped me. Children will end up a world away, whether you want them to or not--unaware of the havoc being wreaked upon their histories back home.
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Jan Ellison |
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282ac8f
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he did not often listen when I talked, so I ended up telling him things more than once, after a while not bothering to tell him much at all.
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Jan Ellison |
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9b38acd
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being born with only one kidney, occurring in roughly one in two thousand people.
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Jan Ellison |
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b3c558d
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When we arrived at the hospital, you were in a medically induced coma, which I was made to understand was a sort of freezing of you, a fabricated reprieve from your own body that would allow your internal organs to rest.
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Jan Ellison |
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7a590c7
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Let's all throw unhappiness overboard.
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Jan Ellison |
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2eb76c7
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Standing there, I came face-to-face with the unwelcome finality of death. What can you do with it? It stops you cold when you think of it; it leaves you no out.
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Jan Ellison |
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16a8477
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I hoped with every mothering cell in my body. I hoped with every scrap of power and will, every particle of knowing you, the years and years of you, the joy and hurt, the work and pride, the worry and love. I hoped until it hurt. I hoped so hard I felt it finally turn to prayer.
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Jan Ellison |
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c10f588
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Actually, when a tree falls, it creates shock waves. And when the shock waves reach an ear or an artificial mechanism like a microphone, they're transmitted into what we call sound," you said. "The shock waves themselves are not sound."
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Jan Ellison |
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b7937e6
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A moment's friction for a life in which I would never again be free of my own body.
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Jan Ellison |
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a94a638
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The heart is large, and there is more than one material in the bucket we call love. I loved your father.
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Jan Ellison |
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efb8d2e
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I was naked. I was human. I was fallible. I deserved to be forgiven. We all did. I
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Jan Ellison |
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857e521
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She moved across the pool deck with a languor, an unabashed sexual energy that made me feel like I was watching porn.
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Jan Ellison |
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ed90d64
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Watching you together--your hair and eyes, your flesh and bone, your three bodies so frank and solid in the world--gave me immeasurable pleasure. It was pleasure derived not from parental pride, but from gratitude. We had been blessed by the existence on this earth of our three particular children, and we had been assigned a blessed task in keeping you all safe in the world.
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Jan Ellison |
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500b75b
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I had the feeling I always have when God and death become entwined--that God is stepping in to steal the thunder of a human affair, a glorious union of flesh and blood, the miracle of two bodies making a new life out of love, a strictly human life that, like all lives, can end only in death. Human love. Human death. What's that got to do with God? Outside,
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Jan Ellison |
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1a91f86
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I hoped until it hurt. I hoped so hard I felt it finally turn to prayer.
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Jan Ellison |
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8d621d4
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But also because the London I paint is colored by the pencil I hold, and the pencil I hold wants a picture with an ending we can all bear. Malcolm
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Jan Ellison |
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d9c094d
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If I expected to be forgiven myself, I would have to forgive indiscriminately from now on. I
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Jan Ellison |
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e120ef0
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A man like that, I thought, would take you in hand. A man like that would keep you safe from yourself. Was it love at first sight? Not exactly. But it was a haven in the storm.
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Jan Ellison |
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91b15ff
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But is truth the same as memory?
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Jan Ellison |
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162ec8a
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I had misplaced you, and now I was losing them, too. Then
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Jan Ellison |
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d4db309
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Hope doesn't like to be beaten down, though, does it? Hope is what gets us through. Hope, and the prayer it wants to become.
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Jan Ellison |
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8cc8dce
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I closed my eyes. I dragged the memory of that day out of the darkness of time. I stepped through it, in my head, blurred image by blurred image, until finally, I saw it.
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Jan Ellison |