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Chapter 2: Always get married in May, it ensured anniversaries full of peonies, and ranunculus, and anemones. The room might as well have been a cutting garden.

Part 1 Chp 1: “…the elderly sculpture, a true believer since deceased, had a tendency to confer bulging eyes on her subjects as a sign of their pious fervor. Her bust of Aunt Helena looks rabid. That of Aunt Vidala looks hyperthyroid, and that of Aunt Elizabeth looks ready to explode.”

Chp 16 Europe:As soon as the last goodbyes were said, the load of care, anxiety, & responsibility which I had carried for 18 years began to lift itself from my shoulders at a rate of a pound a minute.It was the first time I had felt free from care, & my feeling of relief?It is hard to describe on paper.Added to this was the delightful anticipation of being in Europe soon.It all seemed more like a dream than reality.

Chp 11: Humans aren’t so much afraid of failure as they are of people watching them fail. The shame doesn’t come from not scaling the summit it is from the people who judge you from having not succeeded.

Chp 2: Pres. Franklin Pierce made history by becoming the first president to recite his inaugural address (3,319 words) by memory. With a desire to put the simmering slavery debate to rest, he opened with, "It is a relief to feel that no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a position so suitable for others rather than desirable for myself."

Chp 2: You already know that the US was wrenched in two because of slavery, and only barely knitted back together if anyone tries to tell you that the Civil War was a war for states’ rights, calmly look them in the eye and ask, politely, & inquisitively what exactly the states wanted the right to do. Make their own rules about what? The answer is, of course, that they wanted the right to keep enslaved people

Chp 8: Memories and feelings coexist in a close relationship. They’ll lie to you if it means they can stay together.

This was fun to read

Chp 40: “Let us out,” said Carol. “We will look where we need to look. Find what we need to find. And once we figured out who the murderer is, I’ll invite you to the denouement and you can make the arrest.”
“Denouement?”
“It’s the bit at the end of the story when you find out who the killer is and everything gets wrapped up. let us out and I promise it will be along very soon.”

Chp 39: Carol clenched at the mention of the place. She never considered herself a class warrior, live and let live. Some of my best pals are poshos, but the mention of that particular school rubbed her the wrong way. She’d seen a TV documentary once and the juxtaposition of some of the most bulliable children she had ever seen and their inpenetrable confidence made her a little sick in the mouth.

Chp 2: The trouble was as soon as you told someone that you were once a serial killer, it was all day to think about. It was crazy. They couldn’t ever seem to get past it. Carol would be standing there talking about how she used to like pork, but now she found it too fatty. Or how there never seemed to be anything on the TV anymore, or how she had heard that Americans don’t call Lego Lego, but Legos.

Part 6 Chap 2: a lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old

Chp 35: It is another of life‘s great mysteries that sadness and joy can coexist so compatibly with each other. I wonder if on this side of heaven, either one can be complete without the other.

Chp 35: Theo, I appreciate that you are such a sensitive man. You have a tender heart.
Not tender, Asher. Broken. My expertise with sadness is hard earned. But I realize more and more that it is a gift. Living with sadness, accepting it, is easier than trying to pretend it isn’t there.

Chp 26 While Mrs. Ocie Van Blarcum fit in comfortably in the highbrow world of St. James, she was no stranger to the soup lines and homeless shelters in Golden. She and Ellen had seen each other often in such places. She understood the difference between troubled mind and troublemaker. And she recognized in Ellen all the signs of the former. A wounded soul, a lost sheep, a “least of these.”

Chp 26 Mrs. Ocie Van Blarcum was a matriarch of St. James, a venerated and lifelong member whose family name was empaneled in a grand window that covered most of the sanctuary’s west wall. She knew well and lived devotedly the ethic of James “faith without works is dead” she was not merely capable of saintliness, she was saintly. Some would have argued that she was a saint.

Part 1 Chp 3: He kissed the infant’s fluffy skull and said, “I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me,” for what is the point of having children if each generation does not improve what went before?

This was a quick reread. I started at the beginning and then skipped to the middle and continued to the end from there. I had a few questions after reading When He Was Wicked

We need to ask better questions. Does this woman have help? time? space to reconnect with herself? Because desire is something we have to make room for. Desire is non-binary. Desire is a relational experience. It thrives in environments of safety, curiosity, tenderness, and mutual care. When those conditions begin to erode, through fatigue or resentment, desire doesn’t necessarily disappear, it just gets quieter.

Cp 11: In truth, many cases of low libido aren’t just about hormones, they are about context. They are about a life that has crowded out autonomy and rest.

Cp 11: it is not just about stress. It is the kind of fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix. The kind of emotional depletion that comes from carrying the invisible weight of everyone else’s needs. Women in midlife are often the emotional center of their families, workplace, & communities. and when that mentalload collides with hormonal shifts that affect mood energy & sleep, the result is a perfect storm for low desire

Part 3: Libido isn’t a light switch. Responsive desire versus spontaneous desire.

Chp 47: I was afraid to take this job. Before now I was able to call upon reserves of courage. But this was a fear that I could not grapple with. Not merely a fear of failure a fear of leaving behind a terrible legacy in my wake. Every mistake I make will be used to attack me for getting above my place as a woman. They will blacken my name and sully all of my good work. Why should I open myself up to that?

I know how they will treat the first woman Cabinet member. I won’t be taken as an individual. I’ll be a lightning rod simply because I am a woman. If ever I do anything the least bit out of step, if I make some error about my political responsibilities, there will be a terrible public hysteria about me.

I was afraid to take this job.

F: all my daughter wants in the world is a normal mother.
M: then she should’ve been born to someone else! Do you really want Susanna growing up to believe it is normal for women to play no part in the highest levels of their own government? Would a man, any man, turn down this opportunity?

If I said no, the door might close on other women. Is that reason enough to agree? I cannot go just to be a symbol for women. FDR will have a cabinet full of national figures. Powerful and accomplished men will be vying for his attention and they will edge me out.

Mary: Oh, men have been trying to edge you out your entire life and it hasn’t worked yet.

Chp 47: Francis: I’d make a mess of it in the federal government. I know who to trust in New York. I haven’t any idea how to manage in Washington.
Mary: Francis, if you don’t take this appointment, it might be another hundred years before another woman is asked. You’ve been the first to do so many things. So the other women could follow in your footsteps.

Chapter 1: James Hinckley

Martha Ballard (1735–1812) was a pioneering Maine midwife and diarist, Clara Barton (1821–1912) was her grandniece and founder of the American Red Cross.

Ballard recorded over 800 births and Barton provided medical aid during the Civil War. Ballard kept a detailed 30-year diary (The Frozen River), Another descendant Mary Hobart, became one of the first female physicians in the US.

Epilogue: no man should be judged only for his best act or his worst, by only his greatness or his flaws. And no woman either.