“She thanked God that life was not always winter, that spring always came at last to chase away the cold and heaviness, and to release one to warmth and movement again.”
“You women are strange creatures, indeed," he said. "No wonder we men never succeed in understandin' ya. But thanks be to God fer makin' ya the way ya are.”
“Number 12, always remember that I love you -both of you."
"Oh, Willie, ya silly goose!”
“Her love for Willie drove her to decide for his happiness. He'd never be happy to admit defeat, to leave his beloved hills and valleys and return back east.”
“I shoulda taken ya into town, Missie. Gave ya a chance to see the outside world again, to visit an' chat. I missed yer need, Missie, an'-an' ya never complain-jest let me go on, makin' dumb mistakes right an' left. A sorry-looking bunch of cowpokes, a work-crazy husband an' a baby who can't say more than 'goo' ain't much fer company. Yet ya never, never say a thing 'bout it. I love you, too, Missie-so very much.”
“Reckon I'd be lyin' iffen I didn't own up to feelin' a little sore here an' there," Willie said with a grin. "An' thet's all thet yer gonna git me to confess. Full-grown able-bodied man shouldn't be admittin' to even thet. Folks will be thinkin' thet I never worked a day in my life.”
“Though unaware of it at that moment, Missie had just made some friends for life. Not one of those men sitting round her tiny soddy would have denied her anything that was in their power to provide. There she sat, just a little scrap of a girlwoman, youthful and pretty, her cheeks glowing with health, her eyes sparkling near tears, her trim figure clothed attractively in a bright calico, the tiny fair-skinned, chubby-cheeked Nathan contentedly in her arms studying her face. That picture was their Christmas gift, one they would remember all their lives.”
“Ethan groaned. “To business already, Sentinel? So much for, ‘Good morning, Liege. I love you, Liege.’” He managed a remarkably bad imitation of my voice, then feigned sweeping hair over his shoulder. “I don’t do that.” “You do,” he said, grinning. “But my larger point still stands.” I rolled my eyes but sat up, sheet strategically around my breasts, and smiled at him. “Good morning, Liege,” I said in a husky voice. “I love you, Liege.” “That’s more like it,” he said.”
“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.288”
“You are the timid one, the gentle brother – inside and out. You are the one to carry his heart on his sleeve. You are the one who watches silently from afar and loves with all his soul.”
“One night, as I cooked dinner in our home on the zoo grounds, I brooded over my troubles. I didn’t want to spend the evening feeling sorry for myself, so I thought about Steve out in the back, fire-gazing. He was a very lucky man, because for Steve, fire-gazing literally meant getting to build a roaring fire and sitting beside it, to contemplate life.
Suddenly I heard him come thundering up the front stairs. He burst wild-eyed into the kitchen. He’s been nailed by a snake, I thought immediately. I didn’t know what was going on.
“I know what we have to do!” he said, extremely excited.
He pulled me into the living room, sat me down, and took my hands in his. Looking intensely into my eyes, he said, “Babe, we’ve got to have children.”
Wow, I thought, that must have been some fire.
“Ok-aaay,” I said.
“You don’t understand, you don’t understand!” he said, trying to catch me up to his thoughts. “Everything we’ve been working for, the zoo that we’ve been building up, all of our efforts to protect wildlife, it will all stop with us!”
As with every good idea that came into his head, Steve wanted to act on it immediately. Just take it in stride, I said to myself. But he was so sincere. We’d talked about having children before, but for some reason it hit him that the time was now.
“We have got to have children,” he said. “I know that if we have kids, they will carry on when we’re gone.”
“Great,” I said. “Let’s get right on that.”
Steve kept pacing around the living room, talking about all the advantages of having kids--how I’d been so passionate about carrying on with the family business back in Oregon, and how he felt the same way about the zoo. He just knew our kids would feel the same too.
I said, “You know, there’s no guarantee that we won’t have a son who grows up to be a shoe salesman in Malaysia.”
“Come off the grass,” Steve said. “Any kid of ours is going to be a wildlife warrior.”
I thought of the whale calves following their mamas below the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight and prepared myself for a new adventure with Steve, maybe the greatest adventure of all.”
“Whatever happened to “In victory, magnanimity; in defeat, defiance.” So said Frederick the Great.”
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