Sadness

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 Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  8 [image file=image_rsrc2PR.jpg] I was ten, a long-boned restless ten, when we moved to West Greenville so Daddy Glen could be closer to the new uniform plant where he’d gotten a job as an account salesman. Boxing up dishes and pots in the utility shed, Mama found the remains of the love knot Aunt Maybelle and Aunt Marvella had given her. It had been reduced to scraps held together by dust and seemed to have survived only because it had fallen between the bottom of one flower pot and the bowl of another. Mice had picked the ribbon apart from the hair, and bugs had carried off most of the herbs and blood. Even so, the knotted core of the old lace scrap had somehow held all that time. Mama recognized the thing from the color of the ribbon. ’That was a wedding present from your Eustis aunts,” Mama told me, but I already knew what it was from Granny’s stories. As Mama carefully tried to gather it up, the whole thing fell to dust. My stomach cramped, and I wrapped my arms tight around my middle. Impatiently, Mama swept out the shed and packed up her laundry baskets. “Root magic,” she muttered to me. That week Marvella woke up in the night after dreaming her hair had turned to barbed wire, and Maybelle woke up in the morning sure the rabbits had eaten all their beans. They found instead that a dog had dug up the honeycomb and torn right through the lace. Neither of them told the other what they thought it meant. The new house in West Greenville was so far from any of the aunts’ houses that there was rarely time to stop by and see them. Granny was still keeping Reese for Mama when she could, but it was out of the way to take her to Alma’s and pick her up, and Mama decided maybe it was time to start trusting me to keep us both alive while she was at work. After that we only saw Granny on the Sundays when Mama would let Daddy Glen sleep and take us over to visit with Aunt Ruth or Aunt Alma. “Hate you being so far away,” her sisters would complain, but Mama would just smile and tell them how nice our new house was, how hard Daddy Glen was working. And it was a nice house, with a big wide yard, but it also cost more, which meant Mama had to take on a few extra hours to bring in a little more money. It didn’t seem as if Daddy Glen’s route was working out as well as they had hoped. “Your daddy’s having to work awfully hard these days,” Mama told us. “You girls be quiet when he gets home. Stay out of his way and let him get his rest.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Afternoons, while Aunt Ruth slept in snatches, I scraped at the old paint on her front porch, keeping an eye on her through the screen door in case she needed me. Uncle Earle had promised to repaint the porch and the front of the house, and said he’d pay for my school clothes in the fall if I would get the wood all clean and scraped down for him. Every few days he’d stop by at lunchtime to talk quietly with Aunt Ruth and check on my progress. Half the time, Aunt Ruth would be asleep when he came, and he would sit out on the porch with me, smoking Uncle Travis’s tobacco and telling me stories while I worked. It seemed to me that Aunt Ruth’s illness was making him remember her when she was young and well, when they had all been kids together living out in the country north of Greenville, and when the two of them had first married and started their families—Aunt Ruth with Uncle Travis, and Earle with Teresa. He talked like Aunt Ruth did, as if he were continuing a conversation that was going on in his head all the time, musing, reminiscing, talking on and on. “Your mama ever tell you about our daddy?” he began one afternoon, rolling a cigarette. “Man was something, all right. People called him ‘that Boatwright boy’ till the day he died. Took better care of his dogs than his wife or children—not that Mama needed much taking care of. Your granny is tougher than all her sons put together; she sure never seemed to expect much out of Daddy. Thing is, I think all of us, we’re just like him. Your uncle Beau is a drunk. You know that, but so is your uncle Nevil, and so am I, I suppose. But an’t none of us as shiftless as our daddy was, or as pretty, so we don’t get away with it the way he did. It’s why Teresa left me. She always said she wanted a man like a long, cool drink of water. Go on about it like women do when they’re laying in your arms all soft and wanting to talk, talking about that crystal spring, that pure essential liquid.” He laughed a short, abrupt laugh, though I could see in his eyes no humor, just a gleam that seemed hard and angry. His fingers pressed down, inching the paper tight around the packed tobacco, then drawing the cigarette up so he could lick it closed. “Teresa sure could talk. Lord God!” He looked off to the side as if remembering things he could not stand to face directly. I dropped my head. I didn’t want him to stop talking.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] They held the funeral at Bushy Creek Baptist. Mrs. Pearl insisted on laying an intricately embroidered baby blanket over the coffin. I gave it one glance and then kept my head down. Mrs. Pearl had put a cherub with pink cheeks and yellow hair on the spot that was probably covering Shannon’s blackened features. I kept my hand in Mama’s and my mouth shut tight. Reese had wanted to come, but Mama had refused to let her and sent her off to Raylene’s for the day. Mama wasn’t too happy that I wanted to go to the funeral either, but she agreed to bring me after I started crying. Daddy Glen had gotten angry at Mama for giving in to my “nonsense,” as he’d called it, and gone off fishing with Beau and Nevil. Over the last few months, he’d started drinking, matching them beer for beer at family gatherings and coming home to fall asleep on the couch. “Boy can’t drink,” Beau joked, taking great amusement in Glen’s red-faced confusion after a few shots. “Just don’t have the constitution for it.” “The belly,” Uncle Nevil corrected. “Right, the belly.” They all laughed at that. Glen suddenly taking up drinking seemed to please them in some odd way. “Damn fools,” Raylene had complained. “It don’t matter,” Mama had told her. “Glen an’t gonna be a drinker no matter how hard he tries.” It was true. Where Beau and Nevil could drink for hours and only get noisy and mean, Daddy Glen would invariably fall asleep while they were still sipping away. He’d wake up with an aching head and a sour stomach when Beau and Nevil were starting to sip coffee to get ready for a day of work, both of them still half drunk from the night before but going on anyway. It all made me nervous, but like Mama I couldn’t see anything that could be done about it. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “Did you ever see her?” Mrs. Pearl said to the preacher they’d brought in from their family church in Mississippi. “She was just an angel of the Lord.” The preacher nodded and laid his hands over Mrs. Pearl’s as she hugged close a great bunch of yellow mums. Beyond them, the choir director had one hand on Mr. Pearl’s elbow. Mr. Pearl was as gray as a dead man. I watched from under lowered lashes while the choir director pressed a paper cup into Mr. Pearl’s hand and whispered in his ear. Mr. Pearl nodded and sipped steadily. He kept looking over at his wife and the flowers she was gripping so tightly. “She loved babies, you know. She was always a friend to the less fortunate. All her little friends are here today. And she could sing. Oh! You should have heard her sing.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Bet they didn’t really want to be in no army,” I told her. “Bet they went down there on a dare or something.” “Well, they an’t the type to play soldier,” she agreed, “but they’d love the chance to shoot strangers, drive trucks, and work on engines. No different really from what they do now, except for the uniform. They love that story, though, never seem to pay no mind to the fact that the army didn’t want no trash that has spent so much time in jail and hasn’t even finished high school.” “They’re drunks,” I said, and Aunt Ruth just nodded. “Kind of. No different from Travis, I suppose. But you know, they don’t think about it. It’s like going to jail. They think that a working man just naturally turns up in jail now and then, just like they believe they got a right to stay drunk from sunset on Friday to dawn on Monday morning. Beau himself swears that he was fine until he started drinking on weekdays.” She shook her head, pushing her thin hair back with one trembling hand. “You can’t tell them nothing.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “Beau got his taste for beer as a boy,” Aunt Ruth told us one Saturday morning. She was sitting out on her porch while I scraped at the railing and Earle cleaned the gunk out of the works of the old wringer washer she’d decided to sell. “He used to go off with Raylene to that roadhouse over at the Greer city limits after she quit school and he’d just turned thirteen. They earned a little money by sweeping up and cleaning and stocking the coolers full of beer and Coca-Cola. They’d always take themselves a few bottles as a bonus. Never hurt Raylene none, but she didn’t have the taste. Liked cola better, matter of fact, and only took beer to sell back to Beau. Boy liked bottle beer better than mother’s milk, and that’s most of what he’s always drunk, no matter what that wife of his swears. Beer can rot you out too, destroy your liver and turn your brains to bleached oatmeal. It’s a fact. He didn’t need that white liquor they sell over at the franchise.” “Oh, hell!” Earle slapped his palm against the oily metal of the wringer. He never liked to hear anything bad said about his brother Beau. He didn’t even like to hear people repeat things he said himself. “Beau’s got worse stuff than beer in his life. Beer’s nothing. Keeps you regular, beer and pinto beans. If Beau was to stop drinking his beer, he’d probably swell up and explode.” His restless black eyes dared Aunt Ruth to contradict him.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Out of those four records, there was only one Mama liked, and she damn near wore it out. “The Sign on the Highway,” it was called, and after a while I could sing it from memory. “The sign on the highway, the scene of the crash…the people pulled over to let the hearse pass…their bodies were found ‘neath the signboard that read—Beer, Wine and Whiskey for sale just ahead.” What surprised me was that Mama, who wouldn’t go to church and never even said Jesus’ name, had the same response to that music I did. She cried every time she heard it, and she wanted to hear it all the time. It was a gospel song, of course, a kind of a gospel song. Mama would play it over and over, and I’d come in to sit with her while she listened, her with a glass of tea in one hand and the other over her eyes, and me as close to her as she’d let me, both of us crying quietly and then smiling at each other and playing it again. Uncle Earle would come in and laugh at us. “Look at you two. You just as crazy as you can be. Look at you. Crying over some people didn’t never really die. That’s only a slide guitar and some stupid folks can’t make a living no other way ‘cept acting the fool in front of people like you.” He stomped off out the screen door while Mama wiped her face and I sat still. He kicked each step as he went down. “I swear this family’s got shit for brains.” Since I was getting nowhere saving my uncles, I fell back on the only capital I had—my own soul. I became fascinated with the idea of being saved, not just welcoming Jesus into my heart but the seriousness of the struggle between salvation and damnation, between good and evil, life and death. God and the devil were the ultimate arbiters, and everyone knew what was being fought over. It was just like Uncle Earle had told me: if you were not saved, not part of the congregation, you were all anyone could see at the invocation. There was something heady and enthralling about being the object of all that attention. It was like singing gospel on the television with the audience following your every breath. I could not resist it. I came close to being saved about fourteen times—fourteen Sundays in fourteen different Baptist churches.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I bent forward and pressed my mouth to the blanket edge. “Not gonna tell me anything?” One of the cows moaned out in the dark pasture. I swallowed again. “I’m waiting for you to go home,” I said. “I’m waiting for you to go back to Daddy Glen.” There was a long silence. “You think I’m going to?” Mama whispered finally. “Uh-huh,” I said. “Oh, Bone.” She sat up, took another cigarette out, and lit it with a match. In the glow I saw her cheeks pale and shiny. “You want to come over here and sit by me?” “No.” I didn’t move. I felt as if I had become hypersensitive, as if I could hear everything, the cow’s hooves in the damp grass, the dew slipping off the porch eaves, Mama’s heart pounding with fear. “Bone, I couldn’t stand it if you hated me,” she said. “I couldn’t hate you,” I told her. “Mama, I couldn’t hate you.” “But you’re sure I’m gonna go back to him.” “Uh-huh.” I coughed and cleared my throat. “Oh God, Bone! I can’t just go back. I can’t have you hating me.” “I an’t never gonna hate you.” I took a deep breath, and made myself speak with no intonation at all. “I know you love him. I know you need him. And he’s good to you. He’s good to Reese. He just…” I thought a minute. “I don’t know.” We were quiet for a while. When Mama spoke she sounded almost like a girl, unsure of herself and scared. “Maybe he needs to talk to somebody. Raylene said maybe he needed a doctor.” I wiped my face and shrugged. Now I felt tired, aching tired, so deeply tired it was hard to pull air all the way down into my lungs. “Maybe,” I said. “I won’t go back until I know you’re gonna be safe.” Mama’s voice was determined. “I promise you, Bone.” “I won’t go back.” The words were so quiet, so flat, they didn’t seem to have come out of me. But once they were said, some energy seemed to come back to me. “I wouldn’t make you, honey.” “No. I know. It’s not that, Mama. I know you wouldn’t.” I sat up, rocked my head forward, and heard my neck bones make an odd cracking sound as the muscles stopped straining. When I spoke this time, my voice was strong, the words clear. “I know you’ll go back, Mama, and maybe you should. I don’t know what’s right for you, just what I have to do. I can’t go back to live with Daddy Glen. I won’t. I could go stay with Aunt Carr for a while or move in with Raylene. I think she’d be glad to keep me. But no matter what you decide, when you go back to Daddy Glen, I can’t go with you.” “Bone.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Matthew’s promised to take care of me, and I trust that he will. Thing is, Lyle didn’t have no title to the land and no other insurance as far as we know.” Mama shook her head once and looked up directly into Mrs. Parsons’s face. “I know he didn’t have nothing,” she said. “I knew that when he died, and it’s never mattered to me. Didn’t expect his death benefit, to tell you the truth. Thought he wasn’t entitled to nothing from the army.” Her face looked sad but not so stiff as it had. Mrs. Parsons’s face was a match for hers. “I wish you would get lots and lots of money from the insurance.” Reese wiggled happily in Grandma Parsons’s arms and beamed at all of us. “Oh, I don’t need no money, child.” Grandma Parsons laughed and pushed herself up off the couch. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get going, Anney. It’s a long trip for me to get home.” I looked closely at Mama to see if she had heard the old woman say her name, but Mama was already up and reaching for Mrs. Parsons’s glass. “Don’t you want more?” Mama was saying as she headed for the kitchen. Mrs. Parsons shook her head and said no while hanging on to Reese. I saw Mama’s shoulders relax a little as she turned to come back to us. The road outside was still quiet. Grandma Parsons bent over to hug Reese tightly one more time. “You just remember, honey, I got the best of Lyle when I got you,” she told her. That sounded strange to me, as if she’d hatched my baby sister herself off her boy’s dead frame. But Reese grinned like a princess and wiggled her toes into the nap of the rug. She followed Grandma Parsons out to the truck begging her to stay over. “Reese, be good,” Mama told her. “You can see your grandma next month when we go up to her place.” “You will come?” Mrs. Parsons looked sad and nervous all over again. “We’ll come.” Mama’s voice was emphatic, but I saw her eyes flick once up the road as she spoke. Mrs. Parsons nodded brusquely and climbed in the truck. Her brother never said a word, just started the engine and put it in gear. Reese was waving fiercely even before Matthew gunned the engine. I saw Mrs. Parsons wipe her eyes as the truck pulled away, and then I saw the Pontiac come around the corner of the intersection up the road. Mama’s hands curled into fists and pulled up in front of her belly. I leaned in close to her and watched the Pontiac as it edged slowly past the truck. When it reached us, Daddy Glen leaned out the window. He looked back up the road and then over at Mama. “You didn’t sign nothing?” he demanded. “No, Glen.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The bones in her face stood out sharp and high. Propped on the couch with her legs drawn up so that her bare feet were against my thigh, she looked almost like a girl, a witch girl with a narrow gray face. Nobody should be that thin, so thin the pulse in her throat made the skin over her collarbones vibrate. She shaded her eyes for a moment, looking down the couch at me. “You know, when you close your eyes, you look just like your mama when she was a girl.” I nodded. I wasn’t paying much attention. Aunt Ruth had been talking a lot about Travis for the two weeks I’d been staying with her—about Travis and her daddy, about Uncle Earle and her brothers and sisters, about things that had happened long before I was born and she imagined no one had told me yet. I should have been glad to hear it all, finally, and to ask all the questions I had saved up for years. But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t think about all those old stories. All I could think about was going home. When was Mama going to take me home? Did I want to go home? I bit my lips, took a careful breath before I let what I had been thinking come out of me. Aunt Ruth looked over at me expectantly. “Daddy Glen hates me.” There, it was said. I drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, just waiting for her to say it wasn’t so. She was looking directly at me, her face still, calm, open. I knotted my hands into fists. “Tell me, Bone.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “You think I’m dying?” My stomach lurched. I looked out the door. Of course she was dying. I looked back at her and then away again. “Naah, you’re just awful damn sick.” “Bone.” I shook my head. The light coming in the screen door was too bright. Tears began to run down my face. “Bone?” “Auntie, don’t ask me.” I looked up. Lord, she was so thin! “Well, can we talk to each other or not?” Her voice sounded tired. She closed her eyes and brought one hand up to rub the soft skin at her right temple. It looked slightly bruised, a blue shadow on the parchment gray. “I don’t know.” I took the skin of my forearm between my teeth and sucked at it. I didn’t know what to say to her at all. “Well.” She was quiet for a moment, then dropped her hand and kind of pushed herself up a little. “I think we can. I think we have to. There’s a lot of things I can’t do anymore, but hell….”

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

  But they did not worry about their “steps” or pity them or cry for them in the same way they did for their “real” moms and dads. They were not as vulnerable to feeling rejected by a stepparent. One young man in his early twenties who had a very loving stepfather from the age of seven and who rarely saw his biological dad said it clearly: “My stepfather could be Saint Francis or Saint Anthony. He could walk on water. But he would not take away the hurt I feel about my father.” Children are remarkably faithful to their parents in their love, anger, and suffering throughout their lives. The Motherless Child A T OUR MEETING five years after the divorce, Paula, then age nine, was engrossed in her pet rabbit, Racer. She spent hours every day feeding and taking care of Racer. She told me that she liked her friends but she didn’t like her teacher. She said soberly that she didn’t like her mother or her sister. She refused to talk about her father. It was at this interview that Paula startled me again with one of the most upsetting statements I’ve ever heard from a child. “I don’t want to be anything when I grow up. I don’t like the idea of growing up. I just have to grow up.” In the notes I wrote after this interview I recorded my impressions of nine-year-old Paula: “She doesn’t see family life as ever getting better. Her fate is that of difficulties. She couldn’t elaborate; she was just wary of the future.” Paula’s third-grade teacher also reported her impressions to me: “Paula is a quiet and cooperative child in the classroom. She doesn’t relate well to adults and prefers to avoid connection and interaction with adults. Her affect is bland. She doesn’t show interest in any subject or activity. She never talks about her family. She’s scarcely animated in class.” Paula’s teacher was describing a depressed child. By now, Paula’s mother, by dint of heroic effort, had graduated from college with a degree in hotel management and had secured a much higher-paying job as an assistant manager at a downtown hotel. Her daily commute to the city meant that she had to leave by 7 A.M. and she often didn’t return until after 7 P.M. Her new job conferred higher status and vastly improved her self-esteem. The job also demanded more of her time and energy. To be considered for promotion to manager, Paula’s mother started working toward a master’s degree, which meant taking classes two evenings per week. Still an attractive and now poised and self-assured young woman, Paula’s mom started dating a man she met at work. Feeling desired and being treated romantically was intoxicating to her after so many years of strenuous, unrelenting work. She acquiesced to being whisked away overnight and for getaway weekends with her new lover .

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Blom: De toi'" ajdelqoi'" et tai'" ajdelfai'" Kurivou. Leyden, 1839. (I have not seen this tract, which advocates the brother-theory. Lightfoot says of it: "Blom gives the most satisfactory statement of the patristic authorities, and Schaff discusses the scriptural arguments most carefully.") Schaff: Jakobus Alphäi, und Jakobus der Bruder des Herrn. Berlin, 1842 (101 pages). Mill: The Accounts of our Lord’s Brethren in the New Test. vindicated. Cambridge, 1843. (Advocates the cousin-theory of the Latin church.) Lightfoot: The Brethren of the Lord. Excursus in his Com. on Galatians. Lond. 2d ed. 1866, pp. 247–282. (The ablest defence of the step-brother-theory of the Greek Church.) H. Holtzmann: Jakobus der Gerechte und seine Namensbrüder, in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theol." Leipz. 1880, No. 2. Next to Peter, who was the oecumenical leader of Jewish Christianity, stands James, the brother, of the Lord (also called by post-apostolic writers "James the Just," and "Bishop of Jerusalem"), as the local head of the oldest church and the leader of the most conservative portion of Jewish Christianity. He seems to have taken the place of James the son of Zebedee, after his martyrdom, A.D. 44. He became, with Peter and John, one of the three "pillars" of the church of the circumcision. And after the departure of Peter from Jerusalem James presided over the mother church of Christendom until his death. Though not one of the Twelve, he enjoyed, owing to his relationship to our Lord and his commanding piety, almost apostolic authority, especially in Judaea and among the Jewish converts.316 On one occasion even Peter yielded to his influence or that of his representatives, and was misled into his uncharitable conduct towards the Gentile brethren.317 James was not a believer before the resurrection of our Lord. He was the oldest of the four "brethren" (James, Joseph, Judas, Simon), of whom John reports with touching sadness: "Even his brethren did not believe in him."318 It was one of the early and constant trials of our Lord in the days of his nomination that he was without honor among his fellow-townsmen, yea, "among his own kin, and in his own house."319 James was no doubt imbued with the temporal and carnal Messianic misconceptions of the Jews, and impatient at the delay and unworldliness of his divine brother. Hence the taunting and almost disrespectful language: "Depart hence and go into Judaea .... If thou doest these things, manifest thyself to the world." The crucifixion could only deepen his doubt and sadness.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  I discussed in further detail how such a person might have a belief that he or she is “special” and warrants excessive admiration. When dealing with such an individual, he or she seems to express a sense of entitlement or unreasonable expectation for special treatment. The individual may also lack empathy or the ability to easily recognize the needs and feelings of others. Often such individuals may seem arrogant, aloof, and egotistical. The daughter looked down at the floor. These characteristics seemed to resonate regarding the boyfriend’s behavior. I explained that people who fit such a profile rarely make significant or major changes regarding their personality and behavior. If someone fits such a profile, it is more likely that he or she will remain the same and continue to express the same pattern of behavior. As we moved into the latter part of the second day, the daughter agreed to invite the babysitter and longtime family friend to sit in on our discussion. This young woman, who was well known and whom everyone in the family respected, had once been involved in an abusive, controlling relationship. After the babysitter arrived, she explained in some detail the history of her past relationship. The young woman thought that telling her story might potentially help the daughter in sorting through her own recent experience. The daughter trusted the babysitter and highly regarded her honesty and integrity. The babysitter related the history of her troubled relationship, which lasted years and caused her tremendous pain. She said that at first everything seemed to be wonderful, but then the relationship rapidly changed and became abusive and controlling. The babysitter’s boyfriend fit the same profile we had discussed over the past two days. The young woman described him as intensely possessive, jealous, dominating, and narcissistic. The babysitter said that as a direct result of her boyfriend’s influence and his demands, she became increasingly isolated from old friends and family. Her boyfriend became an overwhelming and dominant force in her life and monopolized all her time. Eventually the babysitter had little time for anything or anyone else. She said it felt like being slowly but methodically suffocated. The babysitter explained that she tried to fix the relationship but that her boyfriend never accepted any responsibility for whatever needed to be fixed. Near the end of the relationship, after one breakup, the babysitter’s boyfriend threatened suicide. She went back to him, believing that to do so was necessary to save his life. At that point the babysitter also believed that whatever was wrong with the relationship must be her fault. And her boyfriend convinced her that she would never find another person who would love her as much as he did. The babysitter eventually came to the painful realization, however, that her boyfriend’s frequent professions of total commitment were being used like tools to manipulate her. Looking back over years of emotional and sometimes physical abuse, the young woman wished she had come to her realization earlier.

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

  Meanwhile, children who were able to draw support from school, sports teams, parents, stepparents, grandparents, teachers, or their own inner strengths, interests, and talents did better than those who could not muster such resources. By necessity, many of these so-called resilient children forfeited their own childhoods as they took responsibility for themselves; their troubled, overworked parents; and their siblings. Children who needed more than minimal parenting because they were little or had special vulnerabilities and problems with change were soon overwhelmed with sorrow and anger at their parents. Years later, when contemplating having their own children, most children in this study said hotly, “I never want a child of mine to experience a childhood like I had.” As the children told us, adolescence begins early in divorced homes and, compared with that of youngsters raised in intact families, is more likely to include more early sexual experiences for girls and higher alcohol and drug use for girls and boys. Adolescence is more prolonged in divorced families and extends well into the years of early adulthood. Throughout these years children of divorce worry about following in their parents’ footsteps and struggle with a sinking sense that they, too, will fail in their relationships. But it’s in adulthood that children of divorce suffer the most. The impact of divorce hits them most cruelly as they go in search of love, sexual intimacy, and commitment. Their lack of inner images of a man and a woman in a stable relationship and their memories of their parents’ failure to sustain the marriage badly hobbles their search, leading them to heartbreak and even despair. They cried, “No one taught me.” They complain bitterly that they feel unprepared for adult relationships and that they have never seen a “man and woman on the same beam,” that they have no good models on which to build their hopes. And indeed they have a very hard time formulating even simple ideas about the kind of person they’re looking for. Many end up with unsuitable or very troubled partners in relationships that were doomed from the start.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  18 Lecture 4: Confessions —Love and Tears friendship. He simply recognizes that sex becomes a deeply ingrained habit that is hard to break (after a dozen years). Monica • Monica, the formidable Catholic mother: ƕMonica is one of the strongest female characters in ancient literature and must have been a formidable parent. ƕIn Augustine’s youth, Monica’s voice is that of Catholic piety; she warns him against fornication and adultery in words that ultimately were not her own but God’s (2:3.7). • Monica’s dream (2:11.19–20): ƕMonica dreams about her heretic son standing on the Rule of Faith and an angel telling her, “where you are, there he shall be” (3:11.19). ƕMonica resists her son’s attempt to reinterpret her dream in support of his heresy (3:11.20). (This lady knows her mind, and it’s Catholic.) • Monica “on the outskirts of Babylon” (2:3.8): ƕShe has ambitions for her brilliant boy so she discourages him from marrying too young; she thereby deprives him of the most effective remedy against adolescent lust (2:3.8). ƕShe has him wait to be baptized until he’s gotten over his adolescent lusts (1:11.17). ƕWhen he’s in his thirties and has climbed the ladder of success for a decade, she arranges an advantageous marriage for him to an underage Christian heiress—an arrangement that gets in the way of Augustine’s dedication to the spiritual life (6:6:13.23). • Monica’s tears: ƕWhen she weeps over her heretic son, a priest promises her “The son of these tears cannot perish” (3:12.21). ƕShe weeps again when Augustine ditches her to leave for Italy (5:8.14–15). ƕHer tears are an impure mixture of concern for her son’s soul and desire for his physical presence (“smother love”). ƕHer tears are thus both a sign of God’s love predestining

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

  At the next meeting tell them what’s happening and when things will be settled. Talk about plans for the future and how you will implement them. At this meeting tell them that sometimes children blame themselves. They think that they’re responsible for the breakup and that if they weren’t here Dad and Mom would get along fine. Say that the trouble is between you, the parents, and that they didn’t do it and that they can’t fix it. Assure them again that they are still a very good part of the marriage. Tell them again about plans for parents and children—where you and they will live, changes in parents’ schedules, changes in theirs. Make sure you talk about your concern for continuity in their interests in teams, after-school activities, staying close to best friends. Be honest about disruptions and moves. Make a date to show them where Dad and Mom will be living and plan the first visit together. Obviously, this kind of talk should stretch out over time. Many parts will need to be repeated because children can’t hear everything the first or second time. And of course, the style, language, and timing of all these messages should be matched to the child’s age and capacity to understand. What will you accomplish? Like Gary’s father, you will be providing an example of moral behavior in which every family member receives full consideration. As you and your spouse express your sorrow, the children will not feel constrained to disguise their angry and frightened feelings. They’ll learn that parents in crisis can be trusted not to disappear but to be reliable and available as before, perhaps even more so. 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.

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

  BEDE. The city itself which He had called the nest, He now calls the house of the Jews; for when our Lord was slain, the Romans came, and plundering it as a deserted nest, took away both their place, nation, and kingdom. THEOPHYLACT. Or your house, (that is, temple,) as if He says, As long as there was virtue in you, it was my temple, but after that you made it a den of thieves, it was no more my house but yours. Or by house He meant the whole Jewish nation, according to the Psalm, O house of Jacob, bless ye the Lord, (Psalm 135:20.) by which he shews that it was He Himself who governed them, and took them out of the hand of their enemies. It follows, And verily I say unto you, &c. AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. lib. 2. c. 72.) There seems nothing opposed to St. Luke’s narrative, in what the multitudes said when our Lord came to Jerusalem, Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord, (Mat. 21:9.) for He had not as yet come thither, nor had this yet been spoken. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. For our Lord had departed from Jerusalem, as it were abandoning those who were unworthy of His presence, and afterwards returned to Jerusalem, having performed many miracles, when that crowd meets Him, saying, Osanna to the Son of David, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. ubi sup.) But as Luke does not say to what place our Lord went from thence, so that He should not come except at that time, (for when this was spoken He was journeying onward until He should come to Jerusalem,) He means therefore to refer to that coming of His, when He should appear in glory. THEOPHYLACT. For then also will they unwillingly confess Him to be their Lord and Saviour, when there shall be no departure hence. But in saying, Ye shall not see me until he shall come, &c. does not signify that present hour, but the time of His cross; as if He says, When ye have crucified Me, ye shall no more see Me until I come again. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Luke must be understood then as wishing to anticipate here, before his narrative brought our Lord to Jerusalem, or to make Him when approaching the same city, give an answer to those who told Him to beware of Herod, like to that which Matthew says He gave when He had already reached Jerusalem. BEDE. Ye shall not see, that is, unless ye have worked repentance, and confessed Me to be the Son of the Father Almighty, ye shall not see My face at the second coming. CHAPTER 14 14:1–61. And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.

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

  Most important, people should not use divorce to solve their tremendous distress about bringing a defective child into the world and the overwhelming emotional and financial cost of raising the child. This is a very serious issue. Most people assume that divorce is caused by marital conflict. But we now know how readily stress from another sphere can ricochet into the marriage and lead to an impulsive divorce decision. Vulnerable children evoke strong passions and great suffering. The impulse to run away is potent. Trickle-Down HappinessWHEN I SAW Billy eighteen months after the divorce, he was a very sad and troubled child. He told me he no longer liked school. He refused to discuss Tom, his new stepfather. He wanted to see his biological father more often but he admitted that the visits had not been good. It was obvious from his story that his father continued to deny his son’s handicap or didn’t care. “Dad’s girlfriend is a runner and they invited me to run with them,” he said miserably. “I tried it once and I got halfway around the track and I had to sit down. I couldn’t breathe. They just waved and kept on running. Finally I waited in the car for an hour. Then Dad dropped me off at home.” Billy was also having a great deal of trouble with his mother’s remarriage. “It was bad timing for Billy,” his mother said, shaking her head. “He adored his fifth-grade teacher but she left unexpectedly in the middle of the school year for emergency surgery. So he had to change teachers. This was a week before our wedding. Her leaving really hit him hard and he was very quiet and withdrawn at the wedding. Everyone else had a great time. We were all kind of annoyed at Billy. He was a real party pooper.” Billy’s version of the wedding was slightly different. “The wedding was boring. There were all these people I hardly knew drinking too much and acting stupid. They wanted me to make a speech like Dave did.” (Dave was Tom’s fifteen-year-old son from his previous marriage.) “But I was too tired. I was sick the night before and couldn’t sleep. But my mom was too busy partying with Tom to check in with me like she usually does.” In a mixture of concern laced with irritation, Billy’s mother told me about her son’s increasing sullenness and withdrawals. “Billy is ten going on eleven. He’s too old to play the kinds of games we used to play. Anyway, I don’t have the time for that anymore. Tom and I agree that Billy needs to be more independent.”

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  A storm of both protests and litigation ensued, led by Rev. Jynona Norwood, a minister who lost twenty-seven relatives at Jonestown. She questioned the propriety of the inscription, “It is OK to honor a mass murderer?” Norwood pointed out that the inclusion of Jones’s name on the controversial memorial was the equivalent of including Osama bin Laden on a memorial honoring those lost on September 11, 2001.11 Sadly, Jonestown was only the beginning of what would become an episodic nightmare of repeated cultic tragedies. The media, public, and authorities would seemingly rediscover this issue again and again whenever another cult tragedy occurred. Interest and focus, however, would eventually wane with each news cycle until the next sensational cult story emerged. Authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman interviewed many former members of the People’s Temple for Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change , their seminal book about cults. They sadly observed, “We say that each new report of cult abuses and criminal offenses will stir a major advance in public opinion and await the moment when policymakers in government become aroused to action. But, on reflection, it seems to us that even the carnage of People’s Temple may fail as a warning.”12 In the wake of Jonestown, “drinking the Kool-Aid” would become a pop culture expression to describe becoming so brainwashed that you cannot think independently. This sad metaphor is a legacy of Jonestown. 1978—Synanon Attempted Murder Just one month before the tragedy at Jonestown, in October 1978, California attorney Paul Morantz reached into his mailbox and found a deadly rattlesnake. Members of a drug rehabilitation community, known as Synanon, had put it there. The lawyer had been litigating against the group on behalf of former members, and the group’s leader had ordered him eliminated.13 Morantz survived the attack, but Synanon didn’t. Criminal prosecutions and litigation soon unraveled the community, which had started in 1958. Founded by Charles Dederich Sr. as a self-help group, Synanon eventually became a church in 1970. The story of Synanon is a cautionary example of a group that may have initially begun with good intentions but nevertheless degenerated into a destructive cult. It’s the story that won the small California newspaper Point Reyes Light a Pulitzer Prize in 1979.14 Charles Dederich was born in 1913 in Ohio. His father died in an auto accident when he was four. He lost his younger brother to influenza a few years later. Dederich’s adult life was also unhappy. After two failed marriages he moved to California and ended up as a destitute drunk. In 1956 he discovered Alcoholics Anonymous.15 AA changed Dederich’s life. He became a true believer in its twelve-step program and eventually tried to help others. Subsisting on unemployment and donations, Dederich became a full-time proponent of AA and held small gatherings after local meetings. These sessions evolved into seminars that were highly confrontational.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Allen wouldn’t let her take it, though, so she became a housewife. It’s clear from her journals that within about two months after marrying Allen, she realized she had made a mistake. But then she got pregnant with Erica.” “When Allen first became part of our family,” says Betty, “there was this instant attachment. We all liked him. He was like a wonderful big brother to us. At the time, we had no idea that there was all this other stuff going on in his family. Then we started to notice how fanatical they all were.” Betty remembers visiting Brenda and Allen one night when her sister was pregnant with Erica: “Brenda wanted to go out and get something to eat, but Allen wouldn’t patronize any restaurant that stayed open on Sundays. So we drove around from place to place, and Allen would make us sit in the car while he went in to find out if they were open on Sundays. Each place was, so he wouldn’t let us eat there. After a while, Brenda and I got so frustrated we just asked him to take us home. “Allen had a very successful tile business, but he insisted on always being paid in cash. He didn’t believe in having a checking account, because he didn’t want the IRS to be able to trace his income. He didn’t want to have a Social Security card. None of this came out until after they got married. “We started noticing that Allen was always trying to get around the law. When it came time to pay taxes that first year after they got married, Allen told Brenda that he wasn’t going to pay them. She said, ‘Oh yes, we are! That’s what you do. You honor the law!’ When Allen refused, she had our dad help her prepare the taxes for them. I remember when the car registration came due, Allen wouldn’t let Brenda go get it registered. She told him, ‘Yes I am, because I don’t want to get a ticket!’ They had a big fight about it. We just weren’t raised like that. So she always made sure to do the things they were supposed to: she paid the taxes, renewed the licenses, those kinds of things. She resisted Allen as much as she could. “But then the baby got sick and he wouldn’t let Brenda take Erica to the doctor. And it just kept getting worse and worse.” Allen’s father, Watson Lafferty Sr., had long been afflicted with diabetes, which he refused to treat with insulin. In late 1983, after he and Claudine had returned from their mission and were again living in the family home in Provo, Watson’s diabetes took a sharp turn for the worse. His sons continued to refuse medical treatment for him, however. Their herbal and homeopathic remedies failed to alleviate the illness, and he died. “The whole family seemed evil to Brenda by then,” says Betty.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So saying, she fell anew to weeping wonder-sore; whereupon quoth Antigonus to her, 'Madam, despair not ere it behove you; but, an it please you, relate to me your adventures and what manner of life yours hath been; it may be the matter hath gone on such wise that, with God's aid, we may avail to find an effectual remedy.' 'Antigonus,' answered the fair lady, 'when I beheld thee, meseemed I saw my father, and moved by that love and tenderness, which I am bounden to bear him, I discovered myself to thee, having it in my power to conceal myself from thee, and few persons could it have befallen me to look upon in whom I could have been so well-pleased as I am to have seen and known thee before any other; wherefore that which in my ill fortune I have still kept hidden, to thee, as to a father, I will discover. If, after thou hast heard it, thou see any means of restoring me to my pristine estate, prithee use it; but, if thou see none, I beseech thee never tell any that thou hast seen me or heard aught of me.' This said, she recounted to him, still weeping, that which had befallen her from the time of her shipwreck on Majorca up to that moment; whereupon he fell a-weeping for pity and after considering awhile, 'Madam,' said he, 'since in your misfortunes it hath been hidden who you are, I will, without fail, restore you, dearer than ever, to your father and after to the King of Algarve to wife.' Being questioned of her of the means, he showed her orderly that which was to do, and lest any hindrance should betide through delay, he presently returned to Famagosta and going in to the king, said to him, 'My lord, an it like you, you have it in your power at once to do yourself exceeding honour and me, who am poor through you, a great service, at no great cost of yours.' The king asked how and Antigonus replied, 'There is come to Baffa the Soldan's fair young daughter, who hath so long been reputed drowned and who, to save her honour, hath long suffered very great unease and is presently in poor case and would fain return to her father. An it pleased you send her to him under my guard, it would be much to your honour and to my weal, nor do I believe that such a service would ever be forgotten of the Soldan.'

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile the wretched lady arose with great pain from the ground and casting herself on the bed, there rested as best she might until the morning, when she arose betimes and let ask Giosefo what he would have dressed for dinner. The latter, making merry over this with Melisso, appointed it in due course, and after, whenas it was time, returning, they found everything excellently well done and in accordance with the ordinance given; wherefore they mightily commended the counsel at first so ill apprehended of them. After some days, Melisso took leave of Giosefo and returning to his own house, told one, who was a man of understanding, the answer he had had from Solomon; whereupon quoth the other, 'He could have given thee no truer nor better counsel. Thou knowest thou lovest no one, and the honours and services thou renderest others, thou dost not for love that thou bearest them, but for pomp and ostentation. Love, then, as Solomon bade thee, and thou shalt be loved.' On this wise, then, was the froward wife corrected and the young man, loving, was beloved." THE TENTH STORY [Day the Ninth] DOM GIANNI, AT THE INSTANCE OF HIS GOSSIP PIETRO, PERFORMETH A CONJURATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF CAUSING THE LATTER'S WIFE TO BECOME A MARE; BUT, WHENAS HE COMETH TO PUT ON THE TAIL, PIETRO MARRETH THE WHOLE CONJURATION, SAYING THAT HE WILL NOT HAVE A TAIL The queen's story made the young men laugh and gave rise to some murmurs on the part of the ladies; then, as soon as the latter were quiet, Dioneo began to speak thus, "Sprightly ladies, a black crow amongst a multitude of white doves addeth more beauty than would a snow-white swan, and in like manner among many sages one less wise is not only an augmentation of splendour and goodliness to their maturity, but eke a source of diversion and solace. Wherefore, you ladies being all exceeding discreet and modest, I, who savour somewhat of the scatterbrain, should be dearer to you, causing, as I do, your worth to shine the brightlier for my default, than if with my greater merit I made this of yours wax dimmer; and consequently, I should have larger license to show you myself such as I am and should more patiently be suffered of you, in saying that which I shall say, than if I were wiser. I will, therefore, tell you a story not overlong, whereby you may apprehend how diligently it behoveth to observe the conditions imposed by those who do aught by means of enchantment and how slight a default thereof sufficeth to mar everything done by the magician.