While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life. ###
“Then she heard herself speak as if the voice was coming out of somebody else’s body, slow as tar drying.”
—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
--A Kind of Freedom
At our reunion after years of cross-country phone calls, my best friend leaned toward me across the restaurant table. She was catching me up about being the live-in caregiver of her thousand-year-old mother, who had dementia. Days crammed with appointments with legal, medical, financial, and social work bureaucrats. She was pissed, and I've always been terrified by anybody's anger. Adult day care, abusive help, expensive help, and no help. She stabbed the air with her fork. Family who refused to help. I flinched. Her rage was a blast furnace. “And everybody's telling me to stop being mad.”
And my voice said. “Ignore. Everybody. You’re totally worn out. Keep your anger—it’s the only fuel you’ve got left.”
The flames died down. She settled back in her chair. “Thank you,” she said.
Then we gossiped about our college days.
“Then she heard herself speak as if the voice was coming out of somebody else’s body, slow as tar drying.”
—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
--A Kind of Freedom
At our reunion after years of cross-country phone calls, my best friend leaned toward me across the restaurant table. She was catching me up about being the live-in caregiver of her thousand-year-old mother, who had dementia. Days crammed with appointments with legal, medical, financial, and social work bureaucrats. She was pissed, and I've always been terrified by anybody's anger. Adult day care, abusive help, expensive help, and no help. She stabbed the air with her fork. Family who refused to help. I flinched. Her rage was a blast furnace. “And everybody's telling me to stop being mad.”
And my voice said. “Ignore. Everybody. You’re totally worn out. Keep your anger—it’s the only fuel you’ve got left.”
The flames died down. She settled back in her chair. “Thank you,” she said.
Then we gossiped about our college days.
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