I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting.

You know, feeling and action are always linked, one can't exist without the other. It's sort of a hippie thing.

But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.

...You can't unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know.

I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.

Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.

Stop it. Seriously. This isn't funny.' 'You're right.' A pause. 'It's pathetic.