He came to realize that it wasn’t always necessary to voice an opinion at all. Nobody had to be right or have the last word. Sometimes you just let a subject exist without trying to own it. You listened instead of talking, you considered instead of deflecting, you looked for common ground instead of points of contention. Sometimes playing well with

What a beautiful thing it was to be laughed at lovingly, to be looked back upon fondly, not for your strengths but for your weaknesses. Was there a truer sign of love?

marriage is not built in a day to last. Rather, it is shaped gradually and methodically to withstand the ruinous effects of time and outside forces beyond the control of its principal players. Like all institutions, a marriage requires maintaining, and amending, for it is more than a binding commitment, it is a process, one that demands participati

Ashamed as Ruth might have been to admit it, that Mandy, childless, professionally advancing Mandy, her figure still taut and perky at twenty-five, was anything less than happy was almost a comfort to Ruth, a roundabout confirmation that abandoning her independence and starting a family had been a good move, after all, even if Ruth hadn’t planned i

Why did their children never stop judging them? Everything had been fine until around age eleven or twelve: Abe and Ruth could do no wrong. Then the kids hit their teens, and it was one slander after another, and it never let up. Here they were in their fifties and sixties still disparaging their ways, telling Abe and Ruth to move on, to let go of

Ruth prepared for their visit all day that Saturday, cooking and cleaning and arranging flowers, while Abe was out shaking hands at the pancake breakfast and Little League jamboree. The impulse to impress Fred and Mandy with her new life was not one she was proud of, but it was one she was powerless to resist, as though she needed it. They both tho

It was song that most genuinely embodied fellowship in Ruth’s mind, the pulse of the collective, the communing of voices, the comfort of shedding the self, of capitulating to the larger body. It mattered not whether one could hold a tune, for the man or woman or child beside you or across the aisle could elevate you by extension, simply by singing

Ruth couldn’t help but think of that first night at the Dog House with Fred and Mandy, how Abe had all but begged to accompany Ruth to church the next day, just to be near her. Now that he’d secured a future with Ruth, such eager devotion was a thing of the past.

breedle