reunion

Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.

It would be fun to do a reunion show. I hope we do it some day, but it better be soon. We're all getting on.

We need to go first because we cannot live without your love and care. If we lived longer than you, we would not and could not survive. It__ supposed to be this way. We also need to cross the Rainbow Bridge before you do so that we can be on the other side to greet you when you get there. We wait at home for you here and we wait at Home for you there. It__ just the way it is.

I, um, I thought you might want this back.__ pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn__ reach for it, and I feel like he__ punched me in the gut.Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy__, my brother__.

Someone's going to be very pleased to see you.""I don't think the Elector will be as excited as you think.""I wasn't talking about the Elector."My heart jumps at that.

Hang there like a fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!-Posthumus LeonatusAct V, Scene V

I think there's a little me hiding behind your leg, Chichi.""I'm Goten.""I'm Goku. Hi!"...."Daddy!

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer. I did care that we were out in public. I didn't care that he was Moroi. All that mattered was that he was Adrian, my Adrian. My match. My partner in crime.

Damn. It looks to me like I just missed the best reunion since Sherman got together with Atlanta.

My spouse is my shield, my spouse is my strength.

She wanted to touch him, to throw her arms around him _ but something held her back. Maybe it was the fear that her arms would pass right through him, that she would have come all this way only to find a ghost after all.As though he__ been able to read her thoughts, he slowly angled toward her. He raised his hands and held his palms out to her. Isobel lifted her own hands to mirror his. He pressed their palms together, his fingers folding down to lace through hers. She felt a rush of warmth course through her, a relief as pure and sweet as spring rain.He was real. This was real. She had found him. She could touch him. She could feel him. Finally they were together. Finally, finally, they could forget this wasted world and go home."I knew it wasn__ true," she whispered. "I knew you wouldn__ stop believing." He drew her close.Leaning into him, she felt him press his lips to her forehead in a kiss. As he spoke, the cool metal of his lip ring grazed her skin, causing a shudder to ripple through her."You..." His voice, low and breathy, reverberated through her, down to the thin soles of her slippers. "You think you__e different," he said. She felt his hands tighten around hers, gripping hard, too hard.A streak of violet lightning split the sky, striking close behind them.The house, Isobel thought. It had been struck. She could hear it cracking apart. She looked for only a brief moment, long enough to watch it split open."But you__e not," Varen said, calling her attention back to him. Isobel winced, her own hands surrendering under the suddenly crushing pressure of his hold. A face she did not recognize stared down at her, one twisted with anger _ with hate."You," he scarcely more than breathed, "are just like every. Body. Else."He moved so fast. Before she could register his words or the fact that she had once spoken them to him herself, he jerked her to one side. Isobel felt her feet part from the rocks. Weightlessness took hold of her as she swung out and over the ledge of the cliff.As he let her go.The wind whistled its high and lonely song in her ears. She fell away into the oblivion of the storm until she could no longer see the cliff _ could no longer see him.Only the slip of the pink ribbon as it unraveled from her wrist, floating up and away from her and out of sight forever.

Take your clothes off." "What?" "You heard me." Evelyn forced her mouth shut. She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its beams turning the dust in the air into diamonds. She could hear the rattle of a wagon on the street below and the regular rhythm of squeaking bedsprings in the adjacent room. "So? What are you waiting for?" She stared at the man on the moth eaten chaise longue in front of her. He was serious.

Here's what I hadn't realized: the mother you haven't seen for almost thirty-six years isn't your mother, she's a stranger. Sharing DNA doesn't make you fast friends. This wasn't a joyous reunion. It was just awkward.

Having a blood family means suddenly revising a definition of family that I have, over many years, learned to accept. How can I hold both concepts in my mind or find room for both families in my heart?

I don't understand this--when people love you so much they are willing to get rid of you. I think if I loved someone that much I'd want to stay with them. It doesn't make sense that love would make a mother leave, and I wonder when this mother will love me that much too. I get the idea that love might be something to both desire and fear, and maybe if we don't love each other too much I won't have to go away again. I wonder why love works for everyone else, but it doesn't work for me.

You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn't know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the word for mom.

She didn__ see me because of the reflection on the store windows, and she wouldn__ know me in this car anyway. In fact, she probably wouldn__ know me with shaggy hair and the beginnings of a beard. So I sat for a minute, watching her dusting bookshelves, either talking to herself or singing. Her feather duster had become a prop in whatever scene she had going. She looked heart-stoppingly, breathtakingly beautiful, my Meg.

Oak, granite,Lilies by the road,Remember me?I remember you.Clouds brushingClover hills,Remember me?Sister, child,Grown tall,Remember me?I remember you.