Floating in My Mother's Palm

Some acts of faith, I believe, have the power to grant us something infinitely wiser than we imagine

it only occurred to me much later that the summer I was fourteen I had saved a life--not the life of a stranger as I had imagined--but the life I had taken for granted and which, in the years to come, I would take for granted again.

It was the kind of silence that fills you with light and makes you believe you can do anything you want.

Marrying a woman who was reckless must have been the ultimate reckless act, requiring a lifetime of balancing to keep both of them safe

Their train speeds through the cities and crosses rivers until it reaches Paris. They leave the station, their arms around each other, and walk to the Jardin des Plantes where the panther paces the length of his cage. The young teacher nods as Hannelore Beier reaches into the cage, and strokes the animal's magnificent neck. The panther arches his back. A curtain lifts from his pupils as the pastor's sister slides aside the bolt that has kept him in captivity. His eyes like sudden, green flames, he recognizes a world beyond the bars of his cage.

If I look closely, I can almost see myself floating in my mother's palm. Yet, when I shut my eyes, I find a different image of my mother releasing me as we dance in the storm and twirl in separate circles that cause the water to ripple from us in widening rings which merge in one ebbing bracelet of waves where the borders of the quarry meet the water, far from the center where my mother and I continue to spin our bodies in the radiant sheen of lightning.

said, “but the school board—” He opened his arms in a helpless sweep. “If I can help . . .” The following Wednesday the bells of the chapel did not ring, and when the old women