Shirley Ann Grau

“And you remember how warm bourbon tasted, in a paper cup with water dipped out of the lake at your feet. How the nights were so unbearably, hauntingly beautiful that you wanted to cry. How every patch of light and shadow from the moon seemed deep and lovely. Calm or storm, it didn't matter. It was exquisite and mysterious, just because it was night. I wonder now how I lost it, the mysteriousness, the wonder. It faded steadily until one day it was entirely gone, and night became just dark, and the moon was only something that waxed and waned and heralded a changing in the weather. And rain just washed out graveled roads. The glitter was gone. And the worst part was that you didn't know exactly at what point it disappeared. There was nothing you could point to and say: now, there. One day you saw that it was missing and had been missing for a long time. It wasn't even anything to grieve over, it had been such a long time passing. The glitter and hush-breath quality just slipped away...there isn't even a scene--not for me, nothing so definite--just the seepage, the worms of time...I look at my children now and I think: how long before they slip away, before I am disappointed in them.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“Everyone tells stories around here. Every place, every
person has a ring of stories around them, a halo almost.
People have told me tales ever since I was a tiny girl
squatting in the front dooryard, in mud-caked overalls,
digging for doodlebugs. They have talked to me, and
talked to me. some I've forgotten, but most I remember.
And so my memory goes back before my birth”
― Shirley Ann Grau