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85eee50
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How can I be certain I'm not manufacturing a memory to match the evidence? You can't rely on memory. You can't rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely only on the sculpture of your life you carve out of the available material, the one that stands by while you muddle your way into your future. Patrick
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Jan Ellison |
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7c84633
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Of course it is upon the rubble of ancient history that the present stands. L
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Jan Ellison |
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4161fd8
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we can achieve happiness not by remaking ourselves, but by subverting unhappiness. By throwing it overboard.
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Jan Ellison |
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a68ec2f
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I should never have confessed. I should have wiped my one indiscretion--one indiscretion in more than twenty years--from my conscience,
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Jan Ellison |
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4fc921c
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presenting me with a ring box, in which, instead of a ring, were a dozen old library cards--a symbol for love that could be borrowed, perhaps, but never kept.
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Jan Ellison |
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3b8bf6f
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Perhaps it was the same cocktail of self-indulgence and abandon and want--and an unaccountable wish to be free, if only for a little while--I discovered in myself last summer. I
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Jan Ellison |
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39ffd82
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Somebody said--some poet, I can't remember which one--that 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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98011a6
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If, when I looked, I was not perfect, how could I be beautiful? And if I was not beautiful, how could I be loved?
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Jan Ellison |
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11b3720
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He was so appealing, standing there, so useful and solid and familiar, I wanted to fall into him and demand to be forgiven.
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Jan Ellison |
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ca8f29a
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At nine, she had begun to see a truer picture of me than Polly could. She had begun to see what I saw--not beauty, but imperfections. I let her pull away from me.
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Jan Ellison |
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285ac37
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When he spoke, I had the odd sensation of a warm whirring at the back of my head, an almost hypnotic sense of friendship and safety and calm. Instead of using his authority to his advantage, he seemed to be trying to even things up between us. The
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Jan Ellison |
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b1c75f3
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I don't want something different," I said, and I meant it. And not just about the ring, but about our twenty-one years of marriage. The people we'd made. The life we'd shaped together, exactly the life I wanted. I had no reason to suspect, standing there, that the very next day, I would begin to act not as if I wanted to give that life away, but as if I wanted something different to go along with it. A"
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Jan Ellison |
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dd1740e
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Such a terrible word, terminate. A word from a brave new world in which only the flawless are allowed to be born.
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Jan Ellison |
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9309547
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But this time it was her other self I saw, not the dark fairy of want but a middle-aged woman, like the woman I am now, plain, chastened, mortal. The
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Jan Ellison |
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b6a3fbb
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I knew it wasn't the right kind of love, because it required nothing of me. I did not need to worry about keeping it alive or putting it out since it was kept alive quite independently of anything I might or might not do. He would not be someone who demanded anything of me. He would hold on to whatever pieces I offered him, however flawed they might be. It did not bind me to him--somehow, it freed me. Louise
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Jan Ellison |
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3681559
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It's not always wise to assume that just because the surface of the world appears undisturbed, life is where you left it.
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Jan Ellison |
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63e707f
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People say a mother is only as happy as her least happy child. But what if the state of that child's happiness has become a mystery? What if that child is no longer a child but a young man who has removed himself to a great distance and encased himself in silence?
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parenting
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Jan Ellison |
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d745fdb
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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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70e2a80
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I did not feel lonely, but I felt the memory of loneliness.
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Jan Ellison |
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1c67bff
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It's true--I don't really believe in mistakes. There's only what you do, and what you don't do, isn't there? It was a mistake to the extent anything like that is a mistake. The before and after of it looking differently from each other.
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Jan Ellison |
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073595a
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Some new power had risen in me. All my tight cavities were opening and warning voices were fading. I had only myself to worry about, and if I wanted, I could simply choose not to worry at all.
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Jan Ellison |
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c893e72
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I carried on drinking excessively as long as I could--right up to the moment I decided to become a mother. It was not so difficult, then, to stop. The stakes changed, and you grew inside me, and the muscles of restraint I hadn't known were there became strong.
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Jan Ellison |
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df9a1ff
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It was so undignified and unnecessary, the way married people behaved. The indiscriminate airing of grievances, the incessant flinging of blame and complaint. Of course, I had no idea back then what a marriage required. How the resentments and oversights and misunderstandings could pile up, sometimes moving ordinary kindness beyond reach. Love piled up, too, if you were lucky, but it seemed to be locked away in a separate compartment, somet..
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Jan Ellison |
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ad9dac1
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first sight of him at the bar, the shock of him under my ribs.
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Jan Ellison |
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86e2d93
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I would need to be not so much myself as the person I felt inside me who had so far not been unleashed. He
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Jan Ellison |
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4c8237c
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Want like a small dirty creature, waiting all the years of her marriage for a sign. Patrick was not the sign; she herself was, her own blue dress, her tiny waist, her small, round breasts. And her want was not for dogged faithfulness--and not even for love--but for unfamiliar flesh, for bone against her own bone. T
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Jan Ellison |
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aed087c
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Your father flung his windbreaker over his shoulder and the zipper stung my cheek, the beginnings of retribution, perhaps, for a past that had long ago laid down the invisible blueprint of our future.
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Jan Ellison |
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7201749
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There's the past again, keeping its foothold, wreaking its havoc.
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Jan Ellison |
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790bb22
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walking into oblivion to claim love.
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Jan Ellison |
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b767058
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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...
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Jan Ellison |
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fce5739
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Where were all the people I loved? I could feel them, flung about, the distance between us a crushing weight that I myself had put there.
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Jan Ellison |
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7ccf47a
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The photo is there in the hatbox, evidence that all the people I love best in the world were once in the same house, at the same time, healthy and whole, celebrating the season together.
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Jan Ellison |
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0e3a1d4
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we] made love, though it was a stretch to call it that. I was making love, I think; he was taking what I made.
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Jan Ellison |
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d3b30b1
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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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3be415c
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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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7a2c37e
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knew it wasn't the right kind of love, because it required nothing of me. I did not need to worry about keeping it alive or putting it out since it was kept alive quite independently of anything I might or might not do. He would not be someone who demanded anything of me. He would hold on to whatever pieces I offered him, however flawed they might be. It did not bind me to him--somehow, it freed me.
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Jan Ellison |
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201b290
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It is upon the rubble of ancient history that today stands
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Jan Ellison |
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0e03fec
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Of course it is upon the rubble of ancient history that the present stands.
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Jan Ellison |
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e4c3e8c
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Perhaps blame is the way the universe organizes itself around tragedy and loss. Without blame, suffering is random, and that kind of randomness leads to madness
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Jan Ellison |
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26ccac8
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fucking parking spot." The woman hauled herself out of the front seat. Her face wrinkled with the effort and her small, old eyes leaked and blinked in the sun. Your father took a step back. He stood for a moment, shoved his hands in his pockets, and crossed the parking lot toward me, the rage fading and his face becoming again the mask it had been since I'd returned from London and, four days before, made my foolish confession--a mask I no ..
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Jan Ellison |