It strikes me that whatever advantages there are to being a boy--getting to stay out late and having other people wash your clothes and bring you plates of stuff--get undercut by having to play football.
Mary KarrIt turned out to be impossible for me to 'run away' in the sense other American teenagers did. Any movement at all was taken for progress in my family.
Mary KarrIn my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.
Mary KarrIf dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada.
Mary KarrThatโs whatโs so gorgeous about humanity. It doesnโt matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think thatโs our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope.
Mary KarrNo road offers more mystery than that first one you mount from the town you were born to, the first time you mount it of your own volition, on a trip funded by your own coffee tin of wrinkled up dollars - bills you've saved and scrounged for, worked the all-night switchboard for, missed the Rolling Stones for, sold fragrant pot with smashed flowers going brown inside twist-tie plastic baggies for. In fact, to disembark from your origins, you've done everything you can think to scrounge money save selling your spanking young pussy.
Mary Karr