Relief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Are bowers aesthetic structures? Absolutely. Are the bowers protective? Yes, indeed. And it is precisely because bowers are protective that they have also evolved to be so aesthetically complex and diverse. Essentially, the evolutionary function of the bower is to provide a setting for aesthetic evaluation that also protects the female from “date rape.” Once females have secured their freedom of choice, they have free range to pursue aesthetic preferences for ever more diverse and complex forms of beauty. Because bowers function as both objects of choice and enhancements of the freedom of choice, they create a new kind of ever-escalating aesthetic evolutionary feedback. Once females have secured their sexual autonomy, their aesthetic preferences will continue to coevolve with male displays and decorations, resulting in the creation of ever more complex, aesthetically integrated structures and performances. Like grand opera, bower performances engage and stimulate multiple senses simultaneously, offering song and dance in a theater with colorful sets and props, and even a comfortable front row seat from which the female can watch the show, with easy access to a “fire” exit if things get too hot. As we see from the Spotted Bowerbird, the evolution of aesthetic/physical mechanisms that protect the female from coercion can also allow for the coevolution of ever more aggressive and stimulating displays, because the female can enjoy them without being physically or sexually threatened. In bowerbirds, freedom of choice has greatly enhanced the process of aesthetic radiation. The aesthetic remodeling of male display and behavior provides a whole new way to evolve sexual Beauty from the coercive male Beast. It is important to emphasize, however, that this evolutionary process does not occur because females prefer less aggressive males that they can physically or socially dominate. At the moment that they exercise choice, females actually have autonomy and are not evolving preferences for wimpy males. Rather, female bowerbirds have evolved preferences that facilitate the capacity of all females to exercise full freedom of choice based on the gratification of all their aesthetic desires. — As a graduate student with Gerry Borgia, Gail Patricelli developed a fascinating and unique research program to investigate the threat reduction hypothesis. Looking at videotaped visits by female Satin Bowerbirds to male bowers, Patricelli and Borgia observed that females are frequently startled or frightened by aggressive male displays, and it seemed to them that by crouching low in the bowers, the females appeared to be able to communicate their level of discomfort to the male. They further observed that those males who modulated their displays accordingly were more sexually successful.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘That’s not like you,’ he said. ‘I thought you only went with black boys. Sorry, love,’ he said to Phil, needlessly enlarging on his error; ‘I thought you must be down here after a bit of beige. That’s what most of the white guys come here for.’ ‘That’s all right,’ said Phil gruffly. ‘D’you hear about Des?’ Archie asked in tones of gossipy shock. I had to think for a second. There was a Desmond at the Corry; but he must mean ‘little’ Des, dancing Des. It was yet another sentimental history salvaged from the nightclub floor. ‘You mean little Des?’ ‘Yeah, you know. You had that threesome with him and that bloke from Watford.’ ‘You seem to know a lot about my sex life.’ ‘Yeah, well, he told me. Anyway, he got involved in some other really heavy scene. This taxi-driver that tied him up and whipped him. Anyway, one night things got well out of hand and this cunt goes off and leaves little Des tied up in some garridge, with rats and stuff, and he’s got burns all over him. He was there for three days till some old bird found him. He’s in hospital now, and he don’t look good.’ Archie was pleased to be able to tell me this horrible news, but I saw him swallow and knew he was as shocked in the retelling as I was, hearing it for the first time. While he was speaking the lighting system had gone over to ultra-violet, so that the dancers’ teeth and any white clothes they were still wearing glowed blueish white. Seen through the tank these gleaming dots and zones themselves seemed to be swimming and darting in the water and to mingle with the pale phosphorescence of the fish. There were two or three sickening seconds. The vulnerability of little Des. The warped bastard who had hurt him. A face passing beyond the glass, turning to look in, mouth opening in a luminous yawn. I got up with such suddenness that Archie and Phil, leaning on either side of me, tumbled together. ‘Must have a piss,’ I said. But I was hardly thinking of them: my heart was racing, excited relief rose in a physical sensation through my body, I felt angry—I didn’t know why—and frightened at my own lack of control. Over and over, under my breath, or perhaps not even vocalised, just the shouting of my pulse, I said, ‘He’s alive, he’s alive.’

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Because my father is so private, finding him was hard work. We didn’t have an address. He wasn’t in the phone book. I started by reaching out to some of his old connections, German expats in Johannesburg, a woman who used to date one of his friends who knew somebody who knew the last place he stayed. I got nowhere. Finally my mom suggested the Swiss embassy. “They have to know where he is,” she said, “because he has to be in touch with them.” I wrote to the Swiss embassy asking them where my father was, but because my father is not on my birth certificate I had no proof that my father is my father. The embassy wrote back and said they couldn’t give me any information, because they didn’t know who I was. I tried calling them, and I got the runaround there as well. “Look, kid,” they said. “We can’t help you. We’re the Swiss embassy. Do you know nothing about the Swiss? Discretion is kind of our thing. That’s what we do. Tough luck.” I kept pestering them and finally they said, “Okay, we’ll take your letter and, if a man such as you’re describing exists, we might forward your letter to him. If he doesn’t, maybe we won’t. Let’s see what happens.” A few months later, a letter came back in the post: “Great to hear from you. How are you? Love, Dad.” He gave me his address in Cape Town, in a neighborhood called Camps Bay, and a few months later I went down to visit. I’ll never forget that day. It was probably one of the weirdest days of my life, going to meet a person I knew and yet did not know at all. My memories of him felt just out of reach. I was trying to remember how he spoke, how he laughed, what his manner was. I parked on his street and started looking for his address. Camps Bay is full of older, semiretired white people, and as I walked down the road all these old white men were walking toward me and past me. My father was pushing seventy by that point, and I was so afraid I’d forgotten what he looked like. I was looking in the face of every old white man who passed me, like, Are you my daddy? Basically it looked like I was cruising old white dudes in a beachfront retirement community. Then finally I got to the address I’d been given and rang the bell, and the second he opened the door I recognized him. Hey! It’s you, I thought. Of course it’s you. You’re the guy. I know you.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  What’s more, it requires no effort; it is wholly innate. Pendulation is the primal rhythm expressed as movement from constriction to expansion—and back to contraction, but gradually opening to more and more expansion (see Figure 5.2). It is an involuntary, internal rocking back and forth between these two polarities. It softens the edge of difficult sensations such as fear and pain. The importance of the human ability to move through “bad” and difficult sensations, opening to those of expansion and “goodness,” cannot be overstated: it is pivotal for the healing of trauma and more generally, the alleviation of suffering. It is vital for a client to know and experience this rhythm. Its steady ebb and flow tell you that, no matter how bad you feel (in the contraction phase), expansion will inevitably follow, bringing with it a sense of opening, relief and flow. At the same time, too rapid or large a magnitude of expansion can be frightening, causing a client to contract precipitously against the expansion. Hence, the therapist needs to moderate the scale and pace of this rhythm. As clients perceive that movement and flow are a possibility, they begin to move ahead in time by accepting and integrating current sensations that had previously overwhelmed them. Cycles of Expansion and Contraction Figure 5.2 This figure describes the cycle of expansion and contraction through the process of pendulation. This vital awareness lets people learn that whatever they are feeling will change. The perception of pendulation guides the gradual contained release (discharge) of “trauma energies” leading to expansive body sensations and successful trauma resolution. Let’s look at three universal situations that register this innate capacity of pendulation to restore feelings of relief and life flow: (1) We have all watched the inconsolable anguish of a child who, after a nasty fall, runs screaming to its mother and collapses in her arms. After a short time, the child begins to orient back out to the world, then seeks a moment’s return to its safe haven (perhaps through a glance back at mother or a connection through touch); and then, finally, returns to play as if nothing ever happened. (2) Consider the adult who is struck down by the gut-wrenching reaction to the sudden loss of a loved one. One may collapse, feeling that this experience will go on forever, resulting in one’s own death. Grieving can stretch out for quite a long time, but there is a clear ebb and flow in the tide of anguish. Gradually the rhythm of acceptance and pain yields a calming release and a return to life. (3) Finally, recall the last time you were driving and experienced a shockingly close call with disaster.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Another inmate who wrote letters for Myers at the Monroe County Jail explained that Myers didn’t know McMillian, had no knowledge of the Morrison murder, and was being pressured by police to testify falsely against McMillian. We saved the most powerful evidence for the end. The tapes that Tate, Benson, and Ikner had made when they interrogated Myers were pretty dramatic. The multiple recorded statements Myers gave to the police featured Myers repeatedly telling the police that he didn’t know anything about the Morrison murder or Walter McMillian. They included the officers’ threats against Myers and Myers’s resistance to framing an innocent man for murder. Not only did the tapes confirm Myers’s recantation and contradict his trial testimony, they exposed the lie that Pearson had told the court, the jury, and McMillian’s trial counsel—that there were only two statements provided by Myers. In fact, Myers gave at least six additional statements to the police that were largely consistent with his testimony at the Rule 32 hearing that he had no information about Walter McMillian committing the Ronda Morrison murder. All of these recorded statements were typed, exculpatory, and favorable to Walter McMillian, and none of them had been disclosed to McMillian’s attorneys, as was required. I called on McMillian’s trial lawyers, Bruce Boynton and J. L. Chestnut, to testify about how much more they could have done to win an acquittal if the State had turned over the evidence it had suppressed. We finished the presentation of our evidence and, to our surprise, the State put on no rebuttal case. I didn’t know what they could have presented to rebut our evidence, but I’d assumed they would present something. The judge seemed surprised, too. He paused and then said he wanted the parties to submit written briefs arguing what ruling he should make. We had hoped for this, and I was relieved that the court would give us time to explain the significance of all the evidence in writing and assist him in preparing his order, an order I hoped would set Walter free. At the end of three days of intense litigation, the judge adjourned the proceedings in the late afternoon. Michael and I had been in a rush the final morning of the hearing and hadn’t checked out of our hotel before leaving for the courthouse. We said our farewells to the family in the courtroom and went back to the hotel, feeling exhausted but satisfied. —

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  This is confirmed by the authority of Scripture, for it is said (1 Jo. 2:1, 2): My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin. But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just. And he is the propitiation for our sins: and it is evident that these words were addressed to the faithful who were already baptized. Paul also writes, in reference to the Corinthian who had been guilty of fornication (2 Cor. 2:6, 7): To him that is such a one, this rebuke is sufficient, that is given by many: so that contrariwise you should rather Pardon and comfort him. Again he says further on (7:9): Now I am glad: not because you were made sorrowful, but because you were made sorrowful unto penance. It is also said (Jerem. 3:1): Thou hast prostituted thyself to many lovers: nevertheless, return to me, saith the Lord: and (Lam. 5:21): Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted: renew our days, as from the beginning. From all these texts it is evident that, if the faithful fall after receiving grace, the way back to salvation is still open to them. Hereby we exclude the error of the Novatians, who refused forgiveness to those who sinned after receiving Baptism. In support of their error they quoted Heb. 6:4–6: It is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, have moreover tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, and are fallen away, to be renewed again unto penance. But it is clear from the context, in what sense the Apostle says this, for he continues: Crucifying again to themselves the Son of God, and making him a mockery. Hence the reason why those, who fall away after receiving grace, cannot be renewed again unto penance, is that the Son of God is not to be crucified again. Consequently that renewal unto penance is denied, whereby man is crucified with Christ, namely, by Baptism, according to Rom. 6:3, All we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in his death. Therefore, just as Christ is not to be crucified again, so he that sins after Baptism is not to be baptized again; yet he can be restored to grace by penance. Hence the Apostle did not say that it is impossible for those who have once fallen to be recalled or restored to penance, but to be renewed, which expression is generally applied to Baptism: According to his mercy, he saved us, by the laver of regeneration, and renovation of the Holy Ghost (Tit. 3:5). CHAPTER LXXII

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Tucking my hands behind my head, I lie back on my pillow. “I think I just did.” MONDAY’S SCHOOL BUS ride is still buzzing from last week’s presidential election with Ronald Reagan defeating President Jimmy Carter. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Reagan famously asked Carter in their final debate, a week before the election. I’m better off than I was four days ago , I figure. In the halls of the high school I keep my hair in my face and my head down, hoping that if I don’t meet the gaze of my peers, then they can’t see me, either. I spend my time in class doodling je t’aime and mia bambina amore on the covers of my notebooks. I begin to eat more, and within a week at the Petermans’, my clothes start to fit differently. Because I’m a foster kid I get free lunch at school, then dinner every night with Camille, Danny, and the family. The more I eat, the more I want to eat—“Putting some meat on those bones for the winter!” Pete says—but Addie makes it clear that her home is no place for me to make up for all the meals I’ve missed in the last fourteen years. She’s constantly on a diet, so eating between meals is discouraged for all of us . . . and I catch myself craving the Ho Hos and Twinkies I’d make a meal out of when we were living on our own. Camille, too, is obviously strained by all the restrictions—suddenly our entire lives are structured around the Petermans’ meal schedule, TV-viewing schedule, homework, and curfews. At night, whispering in her bedroom, Camille begins to prepare me: Even though the Petermans have invited us both to stay permanently, she doesn’t want to live in a way that’s so restricted. She tells me she’ll stay with me through the holidays, but by spring she wants to find another situation. “Spring,” I say. “Great. You’re going to leave me just when we’re about to go to court in April to make my emancipation official.” “Regina, I’m seventeen,” she says. “You want to live this way forever? Speaking only when you’re spoken to and always feeling paranoid that our foster parents are talking about us when we’re not in the room—about our futures, our behavior, the way we hold our forks? Huh?” I say nothing. “Do you want the only love you feel to come from snuggling with your plastic Jesuses and pictures of the kids dressed in Lake Havasu T-shirts?” Ouch. One for Camille. “No matter where we’ve had to make a home for ourselves, we’ve always shared a lot of love.” I know she’s right—even when it was just Norm, Rosie, and me shivering inside the horse trailer, I’d learned from living for years with my sisters how to create an atmosphere of laughs, comfort, and ease.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Certainly I prefer to think that Trajan himself, relinquishing his personal prejudices before he died, did of his own free will leave the empire to him whom he judged on the whole most worthy. But it must be admitted that the end, in this case, was of more concern to me than the means; the essential is that the man invested with power should have proved thereafter that he deserved to wield it. The body was burned on the shore, not long after my arrival, as preliminary to the triumphal rites which would be solemnized in Rome. Almost no one was present at the very simple ceremony, which took place at dawn and was only a last episode in the prolonged domestic service rendered by the women to the person of Trajan. Matidia wept unrestrainedly; Plotina's features seemed blurred in the wavering air round the heat of the funeral pyre. Calm, detached, slightly hollow from fever, she remained, as always, cooly impenetrable. Attianus and Crito watched until everything had been duly consumed; the faint smoke faded away in the pale air of unshadowed morning. None of my friends referred to the incidents of those few days which had preceded the emperor's death. Their rule was evidently to keep silent; mine was to ask no dangerous questions. That same day the widowed empress and her companions re-embarked for Rome. I returned to Antioch, accompanied along the way by the acclamations of the legions. An extraordinary calm had come over me: ambition and fear alike seemed a nightmare of the past. Whatever happened, I had always been determined to defend my chance of empire to the end, but the act of adoption simplified everything. My own life no longer preoccupied me; I could once more think of the rest of mankind. TELLUS STABILITA Order was restored in my life, but not in the empire. The world which I had inherited resembled a man in full vigor of maturity who was still robust (though already revealing, to a physician's eyes, some barely perceptible signs of wear), but who had just passed through the convulsions of a serious illness. Negotiations were resumed, this time openly; I let it be generally understood that Trajan himself had told me to do so before he died. With one stroke of the pen I erased all conquests which might have proved dangerous: not only Mesopotamia, where we could not have maintained ourselves, but Armenia, which was too far away and too removed from our sphere, and which I retained only as a vassal state. Two or three difficulties, which would have made a peace conference drag on for years if the principals concerned had had any advantage in lengthening it out, were smoothed over by the skillful mediation of the merchant Opramoas, who was in the confidence of the Satraps. I tried to put into these diplomatic conversations the same ardor that others reserve for the field of battle; I forced a peace.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. (t. xxviii. 10.) Our Lord had said above, Because of the people that stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me. It would have been ignorance of the future, if He had said this, and none believed, after all. Therefore it follows: Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him. But some of them went their way to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. It is doubtful from these words, whether those who went to the Pharisees, were of those many who believed, and meant to conciliate the opponents of Christ; or whether they were of the unbelieving party, and wished to inflame the envy of the Pharisees against Him. The latter seems to me the true supposition; especially as the Evangelist describes those who believed as the larger party. Many believed; whereas it is only a few who go to the Pharisees: Some of them went to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. AUGUSTINE. (lib. lxxxiii. Quæst. q. 65) Although according to the Gospel history, we hold that Lazarus was really raised to life, yet I doubt not that his resurrection is an allegory as well. We do not, because we allegorize facts, lose our belief in them as facts. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. super Joan. xlix. 3) Every one that sinneth, dies; but God, of His great mercy, raises the soul to life again, and does not suffer it to die eternally. The three miraculous resurrections in the Gospels, I understand to testify the resurrection of the soul. GREGORY. (iv. Moral. c. xxix.) The maiden is restored to life in the house, the young man outside the gate, Lazarus in his grave. She that lies dead in the house, is the sinner lying in sin: he that is carried out by the gate is the openly and notoriously wicked. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 3) Or, it is death within; when the evil thought has not come out into action. But if thou actually do the evil thing, thou hast as it were carried the dead outside the gate. GREGORY. (v. Moral.) And one there is who lies dead in his grave, with a load of earth upon him; i. e. who is weighed down by habits of sin. But the Divine grace has regard even unto such, and enlightens them. AUGUSTINE. (lib. lxxxii. Quæst. q. lxv.) Or we may take Lazarus in the grave as the soul laden with earthly sins. AUGUSTINE. (in Joan. Tr. xlix) And yet our Lord loved Lazarus. For had He not loved sinners, He would never have come down from heaven to save them. Well is it said of one of sinful habits, that He stinketh. He hath a bad report1 already, as it were the foulest odour.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I dreaded somehow to find that he had grown complicated, that my hatefulness of the past few weeks had left a stain on him, or eroded that ingenuousness which struck me almost as a property of his body, residing speechlessly in his palms and wrists, in his strong calves and ridged stomach, in the crisp hair above his cock, in the pumping heart I laid my ear to, the neck I kissed and bit, the glossy, speckled darkness of his pupils in which I looked and looked and saw myself, miniature, as if engraved on a gemstone, looking. But no. He was surprised, relieved—like a child released at last from some unfair and arbitrary penance. But there was no resentment in him—and he had I suppose the further relief of finding me pretty again, with only the knotty broadening of the bridge of my nose and the too American whiteness of my ingenious new tooth to remind him of our little season of misery. Unlike recovery from a cold or a hangover this took me forward, not merely back to the old unthinking well-being. It made me romantically ambitious for sweetness and strength, and for the moment I felt all over some seasonal convulsion, quite exhilarated by that grand illusion, that I could make myself change. It was the return of physical strength—and at just the time when, sitting apprehensively, watching those two stoned boys and that beautiful scarred stitched-up man, I had seen myself, with weird detachment, in the society of corruption: the baron, the butcher, the boozed-up boyfriend, and most corrupt of all the photographer. I went straight to Phil that night, though he was not expecting me. I had not been at the Queensberry for weeks, and as I got out of the taxi a new boy on the door—very thin and formal, not at all my kind of thing—asked me if he could help. I looked in on the staff TV room, where one of the receptionists was watching the news and a commis chef, fast asleep, had fallen half out of his chair. In the corridor I ran into Pino, who was fantastically pleased to see me and shook my hand between both of his, insisting on a complete account of the injuries Phil had told him about. He was keen too not to keep me from my friend. ‘You go to see Phil?

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  They’ll feel that their interests and concerns have not been forgotten and they will have received permission from both of you to love you both, to be angry at both, and to cry. Will this or any intervention counteract the effects of divorce or the years spent in a troubled marriage? Of course not. But it will go far in muting the children’s fears, suffering, and loneliness at the crisis. It will set the stage for a new relationship in which parents protect their children by conveying that they continue to be in control, that the children continue to be protected, that the parents have made a difficult decision for which they take responsibility, and that no one in this family is a helpless victim of bad luck or the behavior of a villainous spouse. Parents taking either path—those who decide to stay together in a troubled marriage and those who decide on divorce—will both convey to the listening child how much they value marriage and family. In both circumstances, they will have shown their capacity to deal honestly and bravely with life’s problems, sharing the hard-won wisdom that human relationships are both bitter and sweet. Most of all, they will have made clear to the child and future adult what family is about. All of us need courage and the will to keep trying. Are all divorcing parents capable of this? Of course not. No one knows better than I how difficult this assignment is for angry, unhappy, even tormented people to do. However, I’m repeatedly surprised by how much parents are willing to do if they’re convinced that it’s in their children’s interest. I have no doubt that many parents can have honest conversations with their children, whether they decide to leave or stay in a troubled marriage. To Stay or Go I LOOKED BACK at Gary. “Tell me, do you think your parents were right to stay in the marriage or should they have divorced? How would it have been different for you?” “Wow, that’s a humdinger.” “You mean you haven’t thought about it?” “As a matter of fact I have. For me it was definitely better that they stayed together. But that’s because they were great parents. My brother, sister, and I had a good home. We never doubted that they loved us. I’ll never really know if Dad was unfaithful. My mom was lonely and, as I look back, probably depressed, but she continued to be very interested in us and our schoolwork and our activities. We never doubted that we’d go on to college with substantial financial support or even to grad school if we opted for that. In other words, our world was protected.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was getting late. I had deliberately taken my time in the gym, and spent a while joining in with some Malaysian boys, very supple and clever, who were training on the parallel bars. Old Andrews was coaching them—a man who still bore the stiffness of the drill square in his straight carriage and wiry limbs, and who, by a strange anomaly in the democratising ambience of the Corry, was always known simply as Andrews: Andrews himself wore this as the badge of an old-school sense of equality, though it sometimes sounded, in the mouths of the boys who, vaulting and balancing, literally passed through his hands, like an old-school formula of command. He was a difficult, demanding man, from whom those who used the gym a lot could win a tight-lipped affection. This evening his discipline was what I needed after the anxiety of home, and the oriental boys, with their intuitive sense of space and balance, and their wide, courteous smiles, provided a brief antidote to Arthur and our joint troubles. Then the nearly deserted pool, the water lapping at the edge, had tired me and calmed me more. I watched Phil spring up out of the bath, shoot me a little look, self-conscious but somehow, I felt, pleased, and amble off to the stairs. His trunks were becoming small for the weight he was putting on in the ass. It would have been trite to follow him too soon, and I kicked about for a minute more. As I did so a head approached, old and large, held above the water, but given a sinister vacuity by pinktinted goggles and a white rubber bathing-cap. Its progress was extremely slow, and each time it rode up and pale, heavy shoulders were seen, a weak opening of the arms, a nugatory kicking of the legs, had evidently taken place. When it got very close it submerged completely for several seconds, then came up looking at me, as it had clearly been doing beneath the water, stopped dead and lurched up to the full height of a plump, dripping, wheezing old man, with smooth, drooping breasts. When he pushed the goggles up on to his brow I knew for certain that it was his Lordship.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  “When my dad remarried I lost him to his new family. Two sets of children were too much for him. I’m happily married and I worry all the time that I will lose my husband. It’s like I’m always waiting for that second shoe to drop.” After the book came out, thousands of people from all over the country and Canada called in to radio talk shows to describe their feelings. Children of divorce wrote and e-mailed to tell me that they no longer felt alone. Many were vastly relieved. The stories of other young adults in the book enabled them for the first time to make sense out of their own lives: “You are right on the mark. I kept seeing myself over and over in the book. I’ve given copies to my sister, my stepchildren, and friends of my stepchildren. I know so many people who should read it.” “A child of divorce since age seven, I am still recovering from the effects it had on my life. Your book has confirmed the notions I’ve held for 23 years and helped to consolidate my feelings.” “When I picked up your book, I finally found someone who spoke for my experience. Your book described what I have lived through in an honest way that no one else was willing to discuss. I am amazed to hear that you know so intimately the grief of children who have lived through divorce.” Another said, “As I am a child of divorce, your book was very meaningful to me. My parents divorced when I was five and I grew up fully immersed in the divorce culture. Finally I feel freed of the burden of pretending that the divorce did not matter. Your book helped me understand how much my parents’ failed marriage set the stage for the emotional entanglements that would come later.” I did not talk much in the book about religious beliefs in the context of divorce. But several people reported that their faith in God was shaken for several years by their experience as children. Most of these were adults who had been abandoned by a parent when they were very young. It appears that their disappointment stood in the way of relying on their religion for support. On the other hand, some described how religion had helped them, especially in providing the rules and structure that they found lacking in their lives. Others found the community of the church or synagogue a source of comfort.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Certainly I prefer to think that Trajan himself, relinquishing his personal prejudices before he died, did of his own free will leave the empire to him whom he judged on the whole most worthy. But it must be admitted that the end, in this case, was of more concern to me than the means; the essential is that the man invested with power should have proved thereafter that he deserved to wield it. The body was burned on the shore, not long after my arrival, as preliminary to the triumphal rites which would be solemnized in Rome. Almost no one was present at the very simple ceremony, which took place at dawn and was only a last episode in the prolonged domestic service rendered by the women to the person of Trajan. Matidia wept unrestrainedly; Plotina's features seemed blurred in the wavering air round the heat of the funeral pyre. Calm, detached, slightly hollow from fever, she remained, as always, cooly impenetrable. Attianus and Crito watched until everything had been duly consumed; the faint smoke faded away in the pale air of unshadowed morning. None of my friends referred to the incidents of those few days which had preceded the emperor's death. Their rule was evidently to keep silent; mine was to ask no dangerous questions. That same day the widowed empress and her companions re-embarked for Rome. I returned to Antioch, accompanied along the way by the acclamations of the legions. An extraordinary calm had come over me: ambition and fear alike seemed a nightmare of the past. Whatever happened, I had always been determined to defend my chance of empire to the end, but the act of adoption simplified everything. My own life no longer preoccupied me; I could once more think of the rest of mankind. TELLUS STABILITA Order was restored in my life, but not in the empire. The world which I had inherited resembled a man in full vigor of maturity who was still robust (though already revealing, to a physician's eyes, some barely perceptible signs of wear), but who had just passed through the convulsions of a serious illness. Negotiations were resumed, this time openly; I let it be generally understood that Trajan himself had told me to do so before he died. With one stroke of the pen I erased all conquests which might have proved dangerous: not only Mesopotamia, where we could not have maintained ourselves, but Armenia, which was too far away and too removed from our sphere, and which I retained only as a vassal state. Two or three difficulties, which would have made a peace conference drag on for years if the principals concerned had had any advantage in lengthening it out, were smoothed over by the skillful mediation of the merchant Opramoas, who was in the confidence of the Satraps. I tried to put into these diplomatic conversations the same ardor that others reserve for the field of battle; I forced a peace.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I didn’t want to pursue this vein, and strolled reflectively along to where the two boys ran, as Charles saw it, towards the water. Or perhaps they were already standing in water, lapping round their long-eroded legs. They were intensely poignant. Seen close to, their curves were revealed as pinked, stepped edges, their moving forms made up of tiny, featureless squares. The boy in full-face had his mouth open in pleasure, or as an indication that he was speaking, but it also gave a strong impression of pain. It was at once too crude and too complex to be analysed properly. It reminded me of the face of Eve expelled from Paradise in Masaccio’s fresco. But at the same time it was not like it at all; it could have been a mask of pagan joy. The second young man, following closely behind, leaning forward as if he might indeed be wading through water, was in profile, and expressed nothing but attention to his fellow. What did he see there, I wondered—a mundane greeting or the ecstasy which I read into it? That it was merely a fragment compounded and rarefied its enigma. Charles rested his hand on my shoulder as I bent over it. ‘Jolly fellows, aren’t they?’ ‘I was thinking they were rather tragic.’ ‘My dear, what I want to ask you is this.’ Feeling the physical weight of him on me, I was sure for a moment that he had some physical demand in mind. Would I let him take my clothes off, or kiss me. A don at Winchester had asked a friend of mine to masturbate in front of him, and though he didn’t, such things can harmlessly be done. I stood up straight and looked away over his shoulder. ‘Will you write about me?’ I caught his eye. ‘Well—how do you mean?’ He looked down, quite bashfully, at the bathers. ‘About my life, you know. The memoirs I’ve never written, as it were. I assume you can write?’ I felt touched, and relieved; I also felt that it was quite impossible. ‘I did once write two thousand words on Coade Stone garden ornaments.’ ‘Oh, it would be much more than that.’ ‘But I don’t know anything about you,’ was a second reservation. He smiled. ‘I thought you might be interested to find out, as you say you haven’t anything else to do. I could pay you, of course,’ he added. ‘It’s not that, Charles,’ I said, resting my hand in turn on his shoulder. He looked almost tearful at having brought his idea to a head and facing possible disappointment.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  It’s like I’m always waiting for that second shoe to drop.” After the book came out, thousands of people from all over the country and Canada called in to radio talk shows to describe their feelings. Children of divorce wrote and e-mailed to tell me that they no longer felt alone. Many were vastly relieved. The stories of other young adults in the book enabled them for the first time to make sense out of their own lives: “You are right on the mark. I kept seeing myself over and over in the book. I’ve given copies to my sister, my stepchildren, and friends of my stepchildren. I know so many people who should read it.” “A child of divorce since age seven, I am still recovering from the effects it had on my life. Your book has confirmed the notions I’ve held for 23 years and helped to consolidate my feelings.” “When I picked up your book, I finally found someone who spoke for my experience. Your book described what I have lived through in an honest way that no one else was willing to discuss. I am amazed to hear that you know so intimately the grief of children who have lived through divorce.” Another said, “As I am a child of divorce, your book was very meaningful to me. My parents divorced when I was five and I grew up fully immersed in the divorce culture. Finally I feel freed of the burden of pretending that the divorce did not matter. Your book helped me understand how much my parents’ failed marriage set the stage for the emotional entanglements that would come later.” I did not talk much in the book about religious beliefs in the context of divorce. But several people reported that their faith in God was shaken for several years by their experience as children. Most of these were adults who had been abandoned by a parent when they were very young. It appears that their disappointment stood in the way of relying on their religion for support. On the other hand, some described how religion had helped them, especially in providing the rules and structure that they found lacking in their lives. Others found the community of the church or synagogue a source of comfort. A few letters talked about an enduring anger at aging parents. One woman said, “My parents are getting old. My father is getting frail and my mother needs special attention from time to time. But I still feel so much anger because of their neglect of my feelings over more than 25 years. I am hardly capable of giving the attention that I would normally give. And when I do take care of them, it is without any pleasure at all, only a sense of duty.” One change that may come from these sentiments is that adult children of divorce are starting to speak out.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Verily, it is my turn. My patience is bearing fruit; I suffer less, and life has become almost sweet again. I have ceased to quarrel with physicians; their foolish remedies have killed me, but their presumption and hypocritical pedantry are work of our making: if we were not so afraid of pain they would tell fewer lies. Strength fails me now for the angers of old; I know from a reliable source that Platorius Nepos, for whom I have had great affection, has taken advantage of my confidence; I have not tried to confound him with the evidence, nor have I ordered a punishment. The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods of war; the words humanity, liberty, and justice will here and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and other pediments will arise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality. If ever the barbarians gain possession of the world they will be forced to adopt some of our methods; they will end by resembling us. Chabrias fears that the pastophor of Mithra or the bishop of Christ may implant himself one day in Rome, replacing the high pontiff. If by ill fate that day should come, my successor officiating in the vatical fields along the Tiber will already have ceased to be merely the chief of a gang, or of a band of sectarians, and will have become in his turn one of the universal figures of authority. He will inherit our palaces and our archives, and will differ from rulers like us less than one might suppose. I accept with calm these vicissitudes of Rome eternal.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  She’ll have to talk fast to convince her to get inside, but when she does, she has a hiding spot where they’ll put on wigs and change clothes.” “Isn’t that a little extreme?” “It’s a small town, Regina. If anybody sees Rosie in a car with Cherie, they’ll call Cookie, then Cookie will call the cops, then Cherie will get arrested. Cherie has to play it safe. Then the two of them will rush to the airport in Boise and fly back to New York.” “You feel like this plan is foolproof?” “As foolproof as it ever will be.” “Okay. I have a test to take tomorrow, then I’ll hop on a bus to Manhattan and catch the train out to you and Frank so we can wait together.” “No, Regina—you have school. You can’t screw it up.” “Camille, I screwed up the thing that’s most important to me in the world the day I signed that affidavit when I was fourteen! Rosie’s life has never been the same, and nothing matters more to me than this.” Two of my neighbors groggily stick their necks out of their rooms. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I whisper into the receiver. “I’ll call you when the train drops me at the Ronkonkoma station.” I ARRIVE AT four thirty and spot Camille’s car with the headlights on. I knock on her car trunk. “Hey, open up!” She climbs out of the car and pops the trunk with her key. “Why did you haul a garbage bag of clothes? You need to do laundry this weekend?” “No. I want to be ready if this takes awhile.” “Regina, what about school?” “Camille,” I tell her. “Please.” Frank’s warming himself on the front porch when we arrive at their house. “Cherie just called,” he says. “She got Rosie to the airport, piece of cake.” “So we still have hours before Cookie even notices Rosie’s gone!” I’ve calculated the logistics of the escape, considering every possible glitch. This is the best-case scenario; exactly what we prayed for. There’s a feeling of relief beginning to rise in me . . . but this is no time to get comfortable. “They’re probably boarding right this second,” Frank says. “Cherie said they’re scheduled to land at JFK just after nine o’clock. You two have time to eat. Come in and let me make you a sandwich—” “No,” I tell him. He and Camille look at me, alarmed. “I want to go to the airport now . If that plane touches down early, I want to be there the second our bambina walks off of it.” Frank looks at Camille. “Let me clear out the car so there’s room for the four of you. Hey,” he says, “why don’t you let me drive you?” “No, sweetie,” Camille tells him. “Stay home with Frankie and close to the phone. Cookie could call—she doesn’t know you.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  13 Beacons of Light 2004 to 2012 FOR CHRISTMAS 2004 I treat myself to what I’ve wanted my whole life when a small package arrives in my mailbox. The return address reads: State of New York Department of Health, Vital Records Section When I step inside my kitchen and hang my coat and bag over a chair, I gently open the envelope. It’s my birth certificate. My complete birth certificate. The first time I’d ever needed to retrieve my birth records from the Islip town hall was in high school when I applied for my first job, at Rickel’s. Viewing my birth certificate as a teenager, the mere few “vital statistics” it displayed did nothing to surprise me . . . in fact, it would have struck me harder if all the details had been filled in. What I saw then was my residence at birth—Lindenhurst, which my meeting Julia revealed is the very same town where the entire Accerbi family resides. The certificate listed in which hospital I was born, the presiding medical doctor, the date and time of my birth; and of course, next to the space for Mother it listed: CAMILLE DIANE CALCATERRA But the line next to Father had been blank. At age thirty-eight, for the first time ever, the facts of my existence are all here. Next to the line reading Father is typed in bold, perfect letters: PAUL ACCERBI Paul fought long and hard to hide our connection . . . but in the end, he signed the court’s judgment, stating his awareness that we are father and child. The next day I take both birth certificates to the framing shop in my neighborhood and choose a bold, red matting. “I’d like this birth certificate to go here,” I explain to the gentleman behind the counter, placing the original in the top box, “and this one to go”—I put the new one on the bottom—“right here.” When the frame is finished, I call Camille. “Now I just need to find the right spot to hang it,” I tell her. “I know where,” she says. “Here.” “At your house? The whole point is to keep it just for me. Besides, you have a house full of kids. Your walls are covered enough.” “Not at my house, Gi,” she says. “I mean here, in Suffolk County. Why don’t you just do it? Make the move, come back home for good.” Where is this coming from? I spent my childhood trying to get out of Suffolk County. Why would Camille believe I’d want to move back? Given how intent she always was to break away from our past, I never would have expected that she’d be the one to find her happiness on Long Island. Of course, the people with whom I share the deepest connections all live there, but it is still the place where all the hurt in my life took place.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  On November 13, 2012, he appointed a panel of esteemed commissioners to preside over this investigation . . . and on November 20, Governor Cuomo appointed me as the Commission’s executive director. As I write this epilogue, I am a few weeks into the Commission’s vital tasks. My sister Camille is still working to build up her strength from multiple consecutive strokes, and her doctors still have not concluded what caused them on that cloudy September day. It was while Camille’s entire family was huddled around her hospital bed that I suggested we change the topic and try, as a family, to select a title for this story. Considering the main events I’d detailed in the manuscript, we reflected on our countless homes—fragile, temporary sand castles that we were forced to create in the most resourceful ways, only for them to be knocked down by the rising tides and uncontrollable elements around us. Thus, we decided together that my book should be titled Etched in Sand . I am also writing this on December 16, a day which I acknowledge is the anniversary of Cookie’s death—but I much prefer to remember it as Aunt Julia’s birthday. This is the first year since 1999 that I have not called nor visited Julia for her birthday: She passed in April 2012, one day before the passing of my uncle Sonny. That simple, beautiful message that Rosie wrote almost three years ago has closed that gaping hole in my heart that was ripped open on that dark November day in 1980 when I revealed to the social worker that indeed we were being abused. Further healing came when Cherie moved from Pennsylvania back to Suffolk County this past spring. Her fiftieth birthday celebration this past September brought all five of us together again in one place . . . for the second time in thirty-two years. Despite the challenging seas we had to navigate and the limited beacons of light that were available to guide us on our journey, we all landed safely. We pushed ourselves up through the riptides. Through our journey, my siblings blessed me with plenty of nieces and nephews, who through Etched in Sand will be learning our story for the very first time. We created a whole generation of children that will never suffer intense poverty, homelessness, or abuse. Together, we stopped the cycle. Through his strength of character, stoicism, and love of family (and my pets), Todd has guided me and for the first time in my life provided me the consistency and stability that I actually welcome. Today, I have my own happy home. However, every year in the United States, forty thousand children in foster care will age out of the system and have nowhere to go and no one to help them. It is still a generally accepted policy to deem older foster children unadoptable.