J W

“You can have what Dad never did: a sense of comfort within uncertainty.”
― Luke Russert, Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself

“Willa forgot this scrappiness when Tig was far away, then wore out on it fast when she was around. But their new household arrangement was working out in some ways. Tig, who generally took no prisoners, had an inexplicable tolerance for her grandfather. She took his barked commands with a smile, let him cheat at backgammon, and helped with his insulin shots while ignoring his effluent of foul language. Willa was relieved of her hardest familial duties and had finally begun sleeping better, with no idea she was gathering strength for the next collapse: a new unhappiest child.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

“At some point in the evening Dellarobia had stopped being amazed that Ovid had turned into someone new, and understood he had become himself, in the presence of his wife. With the sense of a great weight settling, she recognized marriage. Not the precarious risk she’d balanced for years against forbidden fruits, something easily lost in a brittle moment by flying away or jumping a train to ride off on someone else’s steam. She was not about to lose it. She’d never had it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior