“They have a beautiful relationship even though they never met in this life. There have been times when we drive past the cemetery, and without any prompting she waves and says, ‘Hi Sissy,’ then tells me her Sissy is in that cemetery. Their relationship goes deeper than I even know. It’s something more. I mean, obviously. She was seeing babies in the cemetery when she was too young to have any understanding about where we were or why.”
“When I was about 23, I got my robot leg. I did wear dresses but I didn’t like to wear anything too tight on my butt because you can see the edge of the prosthetic. I hated it. I was so ashamed of showing that part of my body. The shamefulness slowly disappeared, this summer when I lost my husband in a motorcycle accident.”
“I’m often asked the same question. ‘What was your reaction to the news?!’If you really really want to know, I was ecstatic. I knew I had cancer. Something lit up in me like a light bulb. A vision of me on my death bed. I remember a tear dropping in remembrance of my mother. The joy of knowing that after losing her at age 14, I could finally meet her again. There I stood, 25, receiving the best news of my life, standing in a bus, in pain, weak.”
“A bright reddish-purple color covered more than half of my newborn son’s face. ‘Will this birthmark fade? Will it get worse? What will other people think? Can this lead to other health issues?’ Looking back now, those first months of Leo’s life, I was living in fear. I was consumed by anxiety, exhaustion, and confusion.”
“Let’s just say, passion wasn’t an issue in our relationship. We were headed to the movies and had a conversation that I might be pregnant. He asked me to take a pregnancy test in the movie theater restroom. I just swung my arms in a rocking cradle motion as I walked towards them. My family started asking if we were done. My mom even told me I needed to make John an appointment for a vasectomy. Funny story.”
“She could see I was avoiding eye contact. She showed up to my house, took my baby. I stood there, staring at her and my baby. Like, ‘What do I do now?’ She looked at me and said, ‘We are fine! GO TAKE A SHOWER. I know what I’m doing!’ Sometimes the kind of love I need is this.”
“One ex-boyfriend told me, ‘I HATE when women tell me no.’ No wonder he liked me, I was his perfect victim! I was afraid to wear my hair curly, so I straightened it every day. I wore colored contacts to look more like the favored girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. I said yes to my professor’s inappropriate advances which led me to being alone in his office where he tried to sexually harass me. I was fearful he’d give me a bad grade if I wasn’t nice to him.”
“‘My entire adult life, I’ve been a father. Now I am not sure who I am without them,’ my husband said, sitting across from me at the restaurant. I wasn’t ready for this. I failed to anticipate this. ‘Slow down. You are fast-forwarding,’ you might say. And you would be right. I need to slow down.”
“In our home, we’re currently raising a 17 year old, 14 year old, 7 year old, and 5 year old. For the greater part of my time as a parent, I’ve been parenting children at nearly every possible stage of development, emotionally and physically. It’s confusing, gut-wrenching, and beautiful. All at once. All the time. Every day. It’s knowing I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world, while also wondering if I’m getting any of it right.”
“‘It doesn’t look good. I’m sorry.’ Her words echoed through my head, but I dared not let them sink in. Instead I collapsed against the waiting room wall. She had been healthy my entire life. She never smoked a cigarette. She didn’t drink alcohol. When the surgeon exited those double doors, removed her mask and looked at me, I could see it all over her face. My mother didn’t make it through.”
