Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.
We loved each other. We fought for each other. When worlds collapsed we were buried in the rubble together and when we were dug out of the rubble and rescued we all celebrated together.
She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others’ expectations of yourself.
Conversing with children is a fine art…. An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word.
Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.
There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.
But love, like a mushroom high compared with the buzz from cheap weed, outlasts grief.
Tina nods sagely and says yes and then something in Plautdietsch, probably something like heck yeah do we ever know what sad is. Sadness is what holds our bones in place.
One night I heard my dad say to my mom: I can’t help but think of the good times we’re having now as being painful memories later on. And my mom saying, c’mon now honey.
Let’s not have forced gaiety this Christmas, said Nora, like it was a dish. We’ll have a tiny bit of it, I said.
I stare out the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one’s imagination and one’s goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving.