One Hand, Five Homes. A Lifetime In

Gogol Remembers Having To Do The Same Thing When He Was Younger, When His Grandparents Died...he Remembers, Back Then, Being Bored By It, Annoyed At Having To Observe A Ritual No One Else He Knew Followed, In Honor Of People He Had Seen Only A Few Times In His Life...now, Sitting Together At The Kitchen Table At Six-thirty Every Evening, His Father's Chair Empty, This Meatless Meal Is The Only Thing That Seems To Make Sense.

We Are All #humans And We All Make #mistakes. We #hurt People Even If We Don't Want To.

She Watched His Lips Forming The Words, At The Same Time She Heard Them Under Her Skin, Under Her Winter Coat, So Near And Full Of Warmth That She Felt Herself Go Hot.

Pet Names Are A Persistant Remnant Of Childhood, A Reminder That Life Is Not Always So Serious, So Formal, So Complicated. They Are A Reminder, Too, That One Is Not All Things To All People.

Each Day She Removes A Small Portion Of The Unwanted Things In People's Lives, Though All Of It, She Thinks, Was Previously Wanted, Once Useful. She Feels The Sun Scorching The Back Of Her Neck. The Heat Is At Its Worst Now, The Rains Still A Few Months Away. The Task Satisfies Her. It Passes The Time.