How important things had become, now that they were gone! I felt a sudden panic that I would soon forget everything.

Ruth has friends like other people have wardrobes. I mean that there's someone for every occasion.

No one wants to mother more vigilantly than a woman who is childless and wishes she wasn’t.

There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.

I made cranberry sauce, and when it was done put it into a dark blue bowl for the beautiful contrast. I was thinking, doing this, about the old ways of gratitude: Indians thanking the deer they'd slain, grace before supper, kneeling before bed. I was thinking that gratitude is too much absent in our lives now, and we need it back, even if it only takes the form of acknowledging the blue of a bowl against the red of cranberries.

The seasons tell us, everything in organic life tells us, that there is no holding on; still, we try to do just that. Sometimes, though, we learn the kind of wisdom that celebrates the open hand.

It will happen when you're not looking for it. Love likes to take you by surprise.