If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.
From the time the Joshua tree was a tiny sapling, it had been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. It ex...
You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them, [Jeannette's mom] said. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.Oh yeah? I sa...
I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made y...
God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.
[Mom] said she didn't want her youngest daughter dressed in the thrift-store clothes the rest of us wore. Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting. Isn't that a sin? I asked Mom. Not exactly, Mom s...
Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.
Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who consider...
Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn't that what he wanted us to do?
Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we...
When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.
Dad's death didn't hollow me out the way Helen's had. After all, everyone had assumed Dad was a goner back when he got kicked in the head as a child. Instead, he had cheated death and, despite his gim...
You know you're down and out when Okies laugh at you,' she said. With our garbage bag taped window, our tied down hood, and art supplies strapped to the roof, we'd out-Okied the Okies.
People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free. You go to recognize what's in her nature and accept it.
One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.
I feel like I failed," I said. "Don't beat yourself up," Jim said. "She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don't mean she turned out wrong.
People worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you. It immunized your body and soul...
Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.
Life there was hard and it made people hard.
It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.