Word: wandered
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...both working, and with Mom and Dad both working, the kids are signed up for extended-day sessions at school. And by the time extended-day is over, it's dusk. And even if Mom and Dad were home, they'd never let the kids wander alone to the neighborhood park. You never know who they'll find at the neighborhood park...
...distance from the bookcase to the bed should be exactly four paces. I long for the precision of space I know. Now, missing the feel of moving through darkness with confidence, I turn the lights on when I get a midnight urge to wander. Am I afraid of bruising the white walls? Or am I afraid they will bruise me? Before, I could navigate a labyrinth of rooms and corridors in pitch-blackness. I had breathed it in so thoroughly that I had even memorized which wooden floorboards murmured at my step. Silence was easy. That house was comfortable, settled...
...distance from the bookcase to the bed should be exactly four paces. I long for the precision of space I know. Now, missing the feel of moving through darkness with confidence, I turn the lights on when I get a midnight urge to wander. Am I afraid of bruising the white walls? Or am I afraid they will bruise me? Before, I could navigate a labyrinth of rooms and corridors in pitch-blackness. I had breathed it in so thoroughly that I had even memorized which wooden floorboards murmured at my step. Silence was easy. That house was comfortable, settled...
Here is no childish optimism but rather a declaration of principles, a way of dealing practically with a world bent on destroying her. It is the cry of the Jew in the attic, but it is also the cry of the 20th century mind, of the refugee forced to wander in deserts of someone else's manufacture, of the invisible man who asserts his visibility. And the telling thing about her statement of "I am" is that it bears no traces of self-indulgence. In a late entry, she wondered, "Is it really good to follow almost entirely...
...gather at the family plot in the ancient local cemetery to remember loved ones and hear about relatives we wish we had known. The grownups plant flowers and bicker over who does the weeding. Children five or under get buckets to haul water. The older kids wander off to check out the fancier monuments of our neighbors. When the work is done, we sit on the grass and talk about our family...