The Frozen River

I want the world to remember that small acts, done in love, matter every bit as much as the ones that make the newspaper and the history books.

“An old farmer once told me that a wolf—once it’s gotten a taste for human blood—must be killed because it will never stop hunting people from that point forward.

there are some losses in this life that we do not live long enough to fully grieve.

there’s no cloud drifting across the blue sky of those eyes. They are every bit as bright and clear as an October afternoon.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

He does not like the air on his skin. He does not like being removed from his safe, warm home. But when Eliza says, “Thomas, hush now,” he stops crying, and, much to everyone’s astonishment, lifts his head right off her chest and looks directly at his mother.

A sad tale’s best for winter.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Winter’s Tale

And whatever his life may be now—different than you’d imagined all those years ago when he grew in your womb and curled into the hand you set upon your stomach—he is perfect.

Everyone must sleep, and to do so beneath a warm quilt, tenderly made, is the first thing that helps a house become a home.

Labor may render every woman a novice, but pregnancy renders every woman a child. Scared. Vulnerable. Ill. Exhausted. Frail. A pregnant woman is, in most ways, a helpless woman. Her emotions are erratic. Her body betrays her.