Wanda

“I think people expect too much from marriage today,' he said. 'They expect perfection. Every moment should be bliss. That's TV or movies. But that is not the human experience.
. . . twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren't so great, you don't junk the whole thing. It's okay to have an argument. It's okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It's part of being close to someone.
But the joy you get from that same closeness--when you watch your children, when you wake up and smile at each other--that . . . is a blessing. People forget that.”
― Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“A little girl came home from school with a drawing she'd made in class.She danced into the kitchen ,where her mother was preparing dinner.
"Mom,guess what ?" she squealed waving the drawing .
her mother never looked up.
"what"? she said ,tending to the pots.
"guess what?" the child repeated ,waving the drawings.
"what?" the mother said , tending to the plates.
"Mom, you're not listening"
"sweetie,yes I am"
"Mom" the child said "you're not listening with your EYES”
― Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: A True Story

“An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea