By the time Mom’s hair started growing back-the sort of wispy white fuzz you’d see on a baby hamster-Dad had already abandoned most of her methods of doing things. In the grocery store, even though I’d told him how Mom pushed the cart and made the boys walk in front so she could keep an eye on them, Dad put my oldest brother, Matthew, in charge of pushing the cart. Mom never let the boys push it because they were always popping wheelies and running into people’s heels. Dad stuffed my baby brother, Johnny, in the part where she usually put her coupon box and purse. Then Sean, Luke, Josh and I had to hook our mitten clips onto Matthew’s blue wool scarf. Dad tied one end of the scarf to the cart and held the other end. We trudged toward the produce section behind the cart, in front of Dad, like tired sled dogs, sagging under the weight of our embarrassment.
“Hey, Dad,” Josh said. “Do you want me to run and grab some cereal?”
“The last time one of you went solo in here I got paged by the manager.”
“We’d save time that way,” I said. We’d already spent 30 minutes asking passersby where to find various stuffing ingredients. Finally Dad settled for the boxed kind. “Jingle Bells” warbled cheerily over the loudspeaker for the second time.
“Since when do you care about saving time, Maggie? You’re the biggest dawdler I know,” Dad said. When I ran late for oboe, ballet, or gymnastics, he tapped his watch and said, “The meter is running.” He never gave me points, though, for being buckled into the car 15 minutes before my horseback-riding lesson, and the stable was only a mile from home. He picked up a yellowish tomato. “How do you tell when these are ripe?”
“Matthew’s allergic to tomatoes. And I don’t like them,” Sean said. “Or eggs.”
“You know, Matthew, there are seven other people in this family,” Dad said.
“I’m Sean. That’s Matthew.”
“Sorry,” Dad said. “What about the rest of you?” He waved at Mrs. Cromwell, our across-the-street neighbor, who was sniffing a cantaloupe. She drove a pink Cadillac with “Mary Kay” written on the front door, and wore too much perfume.
Dad held a tomato to his ear and shook it like a rattle. He usually read the paper during dinner, so he didn’t know how salads worked. Mom stood over the table with a knife in one hand and a tomato in the other. If you didn’t want tomato on your lettuce, you had to cover up your salad bowl. Then she went on to the cucumbers, celery and carrots. Sneakers, our lab, wouldn’t eat any of it, so you had to pay attention, or you ended up with a heap of vegetables in your bowl. And Mom did spot-checks for food crammed into napkins and pockets, so you couldn’t get rid of it that way.
“The rest of us don’t like tomatoes either,” Josh said, when no one else did.
“What do you like?”
“Cap’n Crunch,” Josh said, tugging at his turtleneck. “I’m boiling.”
“What vegetables do you like? Carrots? Celery? Peppers? Onions? Broccoli?”
When Dad started rubbing his temples, I said, “Cucumbers are OK.”
He put two cucumbers in a plastic bag, tossed them up to Matthew, and pointed toward the piles of apples. “OK, new system. I want every one of you to grab two pieces of fruit that you’ll eat.”
Luke went right for the watermelons, hauling the rest of us with him. Dad tugged on the scarf and said, “Everyone grab two pieces of fruit that you can eat in one sitting.”
I picked two bananas so I could paste the Chiquita stickers on Luke’s back. Sean held up a green basket of strawberries. “Should we get these for Mom?”
“Maybe we can get her some broth,” Dad said, reaching past me to tug Sean’s hat off. His hair crackled and stood straight up. Dad smoothed it down. Because of the chemo, Mom spent a few days every month kneeling on the tile floor in front of the toilet. She ran the faucet when she had to throw up, but I could still hear her from my bedroom. The sound echoed through the air vents. Some days I felt sick just listening to her.
At the checkout counter, Mrs. Cromwell left her cart in Lane 4 to come over and inspect ours. She twirled her straight black hair around her pinkie, unwound, wound again. No one ever met Mr. Cromwell, but Torq Cromwell told everyone in our 1st-grade homeroom that he’s an international jewel thief. Mom said that was unlikely.
“Hi, Brad.” Mrs. Cromwell wore tiny, candy-cane earrings.
“Hello, Millie,” Dad said. Someone had grabbed a bag of Oreos in the cookie aisle. Matthew slipped them onto the belt underneath the Wheaties. Dad saw it rolling by and told him to “put it back.”
“You let the kids eat this stuff?” Mrs. Cromwell poked at the Velveeta slices; pinched a bag of Doritos between two long, red fingernails. “You know it stays in their systems for years. In the small intestine.”
“They probably should have something besides bubble gum petrifying in there. It’s alimentary, Dear Watson,” Dad said. He smiled, then Mrs. Cromwell giggled, but it was the way you laugh when the grownups are laughing at something, and you don’t really get the joke, but laugh anyway. She glanced again at our stuff going by on the conveyor belt, reached in her coat pocket and pulled out a wad of neatly clipped coupons. She handed Dad a coupon, then slid her hand up his arm, squeezed, and said, “How’s Helen?”
Dad looked down at her hand as if it were a bug that’d just landed there. She took her hand away. He cleared his throat and said, “She’s doing very well. Better every day. Thanks for asking.” That’s what he always said, even though she looked pale and gaunt now, listless as a plant that needs water or sun.
Like always, Mrs. Cromwell started acting as if she was our mother: zipping my coat all the way up to my chin, tightening the knot in Josh’s scarf. “How do you guys feel about lasagna?”
Dad shrugged, “Better than I feel about tuna casserole.”
“Or fish sticks,” I said. I felt my face crinkle up just thinking about fish sticks.
“If there’s anything I can do,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “If you need me to-“
“I’ll let you know,” Dad said. I wished he’d said, “We’ll see,” which meant, “No.” He handed a hundred- dollar bill plus Mrs. Cromwell’s hot-dog coupon to the cashier. Mom always paid with a check and a stack of ragged-edged coupons.
On the way back to her cart, Mrs. Cromwell checked her reflection in a freezer door, fiddled with her hair. A second later, her silvery reflection waved at me. I pretended to be looking at the eight plastic reindeer dangling from the ceiling instead of waving back.
After the first big snowstorm, the plow left a mountain of gravelly snow in the driveway. At first we jumped off the roof onto it, but the stones bit into our hands, and the snow wasn’t all that soft. Instead, we burrowed through it like moles, while Luke stomped up and down the ridge, trying to collapse our tunnels and caves.
Before we went outside, Dad didn’t make us pull up our sweaters or pantlegs to display our long underwear. He left the wadded-up Ziplocs in a heap by the door, instead of rubber banding them over our socks, inside our boots. He didn’t make us wear the ski masks with eyeholes. He didn’t double knot our boot strings so they’re impossible to untie. He skipped finger and toe frostbite checks. He didn’t care if we ate the icicles that hung from the gutters, until Matthew stabbed Josh in the eye with one; then icicles became Off Limits. He didn’t even mind when we tied the plastic sled to the back of my pony’s saddle with a clothesline and sold dollar rides to all five Quinn kids or built walls of snow across the street to watch the cars blast through them. As long as we were quiet.
When Dad had to leave, he called me inside. He told me to read quietly in the desk chair without tilting back on two legs or wiggling around so it squeaked. I carried it to the window to watch the boys. My toes burned and tingled as they thawed. Mom slept, mouth open, pale skin pulled tight over her cheekbones, bony hands resting on her swollen belly. She breathed the way you do when you’ve been dunked in the pool, and you come up for air, raspy and hollow. I didn’t see her wake up; suddenly she was staring at me with those muddy-colored eyes that used to be green. I used to think she could see my thoughts. Now I wondered what she saw.
“Do you know how proud I am of you?” she said. Her voice trembled.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “Even though my room’s always messy?”
She smiled a little; closed her eyes. “Don’t forget to live your own life,” she said.
Mom dozed off again. I sat in the chair, forehead pressed to the cold glass, thinking of things to say when she woke up again, when Mrs. Cromwell’s car turned into the driveway. The boys had just started construction of an igloo using meatloaf pans to form snow bricks. I slipped off the chair to crack the window an inch.
The boys stood, unmoving, to watch Mrs. Cromwell’s wobbly progress across the driveway. Sneakers tore around the yard, rolling in the snow, eating it. Mrs. Cromwell carried a foil-covered pan. People brought lots of casseroles. Her heels left a wandering trail of puncture marks in the snow. I pressed my ear to the gap in the window. Cold air tickled my cheek and ear. I slid the window up farther to watch as well.
She stopped, tottering a little, and turned to the boys. “I brought you kids some dinner.” She rubbed her cheek on her shoulder, leaving a pink smudge on her white coat. She held the glass pan out to them and smiled. “This is my own recipe. It’s not tuna. It’s vegetarian lasagna.” Steam curled from a tear in the foil.
Matthew clomped over to her, lifted the pan from her fuzzy green mittens, and nodded. Mrs. Cromwell stood awkwardly for a moment. She glanced at my window. I dropped down out of sight, feeling as though I’d been caught at something, or she had. The cold air made my scalp tingle and my body shudder. When I peeked out, Mrs. Cromwell was halfway to the car, arms out like a tightrope walker, stepping back along her footprints.
After she’d gone, Matthew set the lasagna pan in the snow. Sneakers lifted the tin foil with her nose to wolf down the contents. Two weeks ago she ate 12 chicken enchiladas. We didn’t want Dad thinking we needed Mrs. Cromwell to take care of us.
Mom had us make our presents every Christmas. Dad stored most of the gifts we gave him in his closet, under a tennis racket. Last year I made stockings for everyone out of tube socks, felt and glitter. Luke charcoaled everyone’s picture. Matthew stamped our names into keychains with his leather kit. Sean gave us each a gift certificate for a violin lesson with him. Like he’d have any takers. Josh made everyone clothespin-deer ornaments with red-bead noses and sequin eyes.
This year, Dad took us to the mall. He parked in the fire lane with the flashers on and pulled two 20s out of his wallet. Matthew always got to hold the money because he’s the oldest: 12.
“Pick out something nice for your mother,” Dad said. “And not from the pet store. I’ll pick you up at 3. Who’s got a watch?” Matthew and Josh held up their arms.
In Marshall Field’s, Luke said: “How about perfume? She likes perfume.”
No one answered him. The chemo gave Mom a bloodhound nose. This week she’d nailed Sean for using the seashell guest soaps and Matthew for eating a hot lunch at school (instead of PB&J like the rest of us). She smelled it when Josh’s goldfish, Hal, jumped out of the tank and started to shrivel up behind the can opener. All of it made her sit, holding her pink head in her hands, rocking back and forth.
We headed right for the escalators to run down the up-side and up the down-side until the security guard came over. Then Matthew herded us toward housewares. Luke kept stopping to look at his hair in the mirrors; he’d ripped out a patch above his ear when he fell out of the treehouse on Tuesday. A clump of his red hair was still wound around the ladder nail. You could still see his scalp bits on the ends.
Matthew wanted to buy these nutcracker candlesticks, even though we only lit candles on birthdays. Sean wanted to get her a music box. Luke voted to buy her Godiva chocolates, probably so he could eat them all. Josh wanted to get her a remote control pickup truck to help her cart stuff around on the days when her legs shook from standing too long. I said we should get our picture taken with Santa. Mom made them into Christmas cards. Matthew and Sean said they were too old for Santa. Like I still believed.
Twenty minutes before Dad picked us up, Sean won paper-rock-scissors, so we bought the music box, spent the rest on a trout-fishing book for Dad, and caught 15 minutes of “Frosty the Snowman” on 93 TV sets at Sears.
Dad waited by the curb outside with the hazard lights flashing. My baby brother, Johnny, kicked at the dashboard from his car seat. He wore my old snowmobile suit. Smoke curled from the exhaust pipe and blew into our faces in icy gusts. I tugged my turtleneck over my nose as I waited to climb in. Cold blue exhaust seeped through the fabric, into my lungs.
“Did you get her something?” Dad said.
I nodded at his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Good. Where’s my change?” Dad held his flat palm over the seat. Matthew gave him two dimes and three pennies. I gave him the nickel I found by a drinking fountain. Luke set a gum wrapper folded into a tiny silver airplane next to my nickel. Dad blew it like a stray feather into the air, then tossed the change into the ashtray.
On Christmas Eve, even though Mom didn’t feel up to going, Dad still made us be angels at St. Andrew’s 5 o’clock mass. We’d missed the costume-fitting day, so Luke’s gown barely reached his knees, Sean’s wire wings scraped against his shoulder blades, and I kept tripping on the bottom hem of my dress. Sister Ethelrita folded my hem up and stapled it while Dad tightened Josh’s tinsel halo to keep it from slipping down over his ears. Boy angels lined up to have Mrs. Cromwell (in a Santa hat) put batteries in their candles. Mom said real candles were a fire hazard; Dad said the nuns didn’t want to get sued by some angel with a hot-wax burn and a lawyer for a father. The boys dressed in white altar-boy cassocks. Girl angels carried tinkling chimes and wore dresses that Sister Ethelrita bought from Goodwill. I spotted my sparkling silver gown from last year on a girl wearing tennis shoes. The waist hung down almost to her knees.
“Maybe I could go without wings,” Sean said. He reached behind his back to lift the tips of the wings pinned to his back. Because of the wings, we couldn’t sit down for the whole mass: 1 hour and 5 minutes, counting the procession to the altar, when the angels set the baby Jesus in the manger, the golden crown beside him.
“I don’t think so,” Dad said. “Who ever heard of an angel with no wings?”
“How about a California Angel?” Luke said. He’d bent his halo into a triangle.
“Or one of Charlie’s Angels,” I said.
“My costume is way too small. I think it’s a sign from God,” Matthew said. He told us he was too old to be an angel. But we dressed up every Christmas Eve; it was tradition. Besides, Dad said he’d give a $2 bill to anyone who made it through angel duty without crying, hitting, pinching, whining, biting, scratching or complaining. That included crying because somebody pinched you. I checked.
Matthew kneeled on the floor in front of me, costume folded in his lap. “I can barely get my head through the neck hole, and the sleeves don’t even come past my elbows.”
“We all have our crosses to bear, Matthew,” Dad said. “Deal with it.”
Sister Ethelrita pinched the two puffs of empty fabric on my chest and said, “This one was a bridesmaid’s dress, I think.” I hoped she’d let go before anyone saw where she was grabbing my dress.
“Who’s carrying JC?” Luke said. He pointed at the plaster baby Jesus tied to a pillow with a wide red ribbon. The nuns added the ribbon after the time Josh tripped and fumbled the baby Jesus on the way to the manger. It skittered across the floor and bounced off a pew and part of the hand broke off. I craned my neck to see the tiny crack in the outstretched palm, wondering if Josh would get in trouble for that someday, in heaven.
“We don’t say JC, Luke. That’s sacrilege,” Sister Ethelrita said between stapler crunches. “But Carla Romero will be carrying him. And Torq Cromwell will be carrying his crown.” She said “him” and “his” extra loud.
“Remember when Josh dropped him?” Luke said.
“Shut up, butt face,” Josh said.
“Hark the herald angels sing,” Dad said. Sister Ethelrita leaned over and patted his foot. Dad looked at his salt-stained shoe as if she might’ve left sticky fingerprints on it.
After mass, every angel had to walk around St. Andrew’s Hospital with a nun to hand out stockings to the sick people. Only Matthew and Sean got to visit Mom in the hospital after her surgery, because they’re the oldest. They said she looked puffy, like a fat person, but not soft. I was glad I didn’t have to go; it was bad enough talking to her on the phone. She always sounded like I’d woken her up, breathy and tired.
Each hospital stocking had an orange, plastic rosary, candy cane, chocolate Santa and gingerbread man. When we made gingerbread men last week, Dad didn’t even notice that we put all the parts on them. He paid no attention to us standing in front of the oven in shifts while they baked. He’d scooped a gingerbread woman off the warm tray with a spatula and bit her leg off without even noticing the two extra balls of dough on her chest.
The hospital reeked of floor wax and rubbing alcohol, but the first room I went into smelled different, sickly sweet. I tried to breathe through my mouth. An old man lay in the bed with one leg bare and the other on a pillow, wrapped in white bandages. He snored with his mouth wide open and his eyes pinched shut. Gray static crackled on his TV screen.
“He’s asleep,” I told the tall, skinny nun behind me. “I’ll just set this on his bed.”
I wanted to lob the lumpy stocking from the doorway, or run back and grab Dad from his post by the pay phone to make him come with, but the nun nudged me forward with her knee. I took a deep breath and held it, darted forward to the bed, dropped the stocking next to his bandaged leg, dashed back to the doorway, and exhaled.
“How’s he going to see it there?” the nun said. I wished she’d mind her own beeswax, or at least lower her voice so the man wouldn’t wake up. The stink reminded me of the dead squirrel in the woods that Sneakers kept rolling on top of last summer. P-U.
“It’s the only thing on the bed that isn’t white,” I told the nun. “He’ll see it.”
“How about putting it on his nightstand? Then he won’t have to reach so far.”
“I don’t want to,” I said. Then whispered, “He smells funny.”
The nun rolled her eyes and turned. The folds of her habit swept out the door in a black whirl. In the hall I tried to give Dad a pleading look, but he was leaning against the pay phone talking to Mrs. Cromwell, who was holding Johnny on her hip. I trailed the billowing black fabric into the next room.
In there, a lady sat cross-legged in the bed with her hands in her armpits, staring at the wall. Her red hair was tied in a braid that dangled like a rope down to her waist. She twisted her body to face the window when I came in. At least she didn’t smell. I stepped softly to her bed, held out the stocking, and said, “Merry Christmas!” She didn’t move, so I set the stocking on the edge of the bed. She reached around behind her and knocked it to the floor. White gauze was wound around her wrist and hand. At the door I mumbled, “Happy New Year.”
She said, in a sleepy voice, “Shut your accusing mouth.”
I blurted, “Why don’t you?” The nun clamped her leathery hand over my mouth and pulled me out the door. I twisted free. Mom always said, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all; but she cursed at other people on the highway all the time. I felt sorry for Mom, having to stay in this smelly place with all these crazy, sick people.
I spotted Luke at the end of the corridor. His nun steered him with one hand clamped on top of his head. He flipped me the bird before she piloted him into his next room. Mrs. Cromwell was giving the sleeping Johnny back to Dad. She stood really close for the handoff. My nun clamped her cold fingers around the back of my neck and pushed me into the last room.
Machines surrounding the man’s bed whirred, buzzed and beeped. A black nurse stood up from the chair beside him to tie a papery mask around my face. I tiptoed to the bed and, because there was no nightstand, set the stocking beside his thin hand. When I snuck a peek at the clear tubes in the man’s mouth and nose, he was looking at me with eyes the color of molasses. Startled, I stumbled backwards.
“This is a hell of a thing for a man to see after a major surgery. An angel,” he said. His scratchy voice reminded me of a radio that’s not tuned in all the way. The nurse grabbed his wrist and stared at her watch. A white tube poked out of his Adam’s apple. I tried not to stare at it. I wondered if he could drink through it. “Christ. What are you supposed to be? A surgical angel?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m Jewish. I wrote it on the admission form, for crying out loud. Christmas. Jesus. Angels. I don’t believe in any of it.” Something gurgled in his chest.
“Do you want me to take your stocking away?” I said.
“Hell no,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the garbage they try to feed you here. I could use a little variety in my diet.”
“I don’t believe in angels either,” I said. Mom said Grandpa became an angel after he died. When I knelt in front of the gray casket and poked his arm at the wake, though, he felt like a pot roast before you cook it. Cold and solid, not smoky and light-able to fly.
“Well if you ask me that’s a damn shame,” he said.
The nurse tucked his pale arm back under the blanket. He’d dozed off before I remembered to say, “Happy New Year.”
Josh still had his halo on when we filed past Mom, asleep on the couch, breathing like she couldn’t get enough air. Uncle Bill, Mom’s brother, sat in Dad’s chair, watching the TV without sound. The tree lights blinked on and off. The room didn’t smell of pine this year; it smelled like baby powder. Our stockings, I noticed, were not dangling limp in front of the fireplace, ready to be crammed with candy.
We each gave Uncle Bill a kiss on the cheek, even though Mom wasn’t awake to make us, and Dad wouldn’t care if we didn’t. Sneakers lay on the floor with her head on her paws, watching us walk by, thumping her tail against the couch.
Christmas worked like this: Mom or Dad tucked you into bed, pulled the sheets so tight it was hard to roll over, told you to let them sleep until the sun came up. You lay in the dark until one of your brothers tapped softly on your door. You crept out to the stairs to watch, first for Santa (whom we never saw), later for Mom and Dad’s shadowy figures gliding around the family room, bumping into furniture, crinkling paper, laughing softly. When your eyes felt heavy and your neck started to droop, you crawled back down the hall to drag your tired body into bed and wait for the gray light of morning. Then you’d creep downstairs to check the tags on the stacks of packages, hoping the biggest box was yours, praying you didn’t get any clothes.
Dad always filmed the gift opening with a noisy camera, a hot white light, and Mom reminding him to slow the hell down so everything’s not a blur. After every package had been ripped open, and Mom had made her thank-you-note list (who got what from whom), everyone had to pick up the stretched-out ribbons and crumpled wrapping paper, saving the good boxes and bows for next year. While the boys played with each other’s toys, Mom made pancakes, bacon, eggs, toast and coffee in the kitchen, and Dad watched football, I grabbed any embarrassing presents that were stowed under the couch, like the days-of-the-week underwear from Grandma, to stash them in my room.
Tonight, when we got to the stairs, Dad was sitting on the couch, rubbing Mom’s bare foot between his hands. The flickering light from the TV changed the color of his face every few seconds.
“You think they got us any presents this year?” Sean whispered.
No one answered. Josh and I had searched Mom’s usual hiding places but didn’t find much: football, stuffed panda, Lincoln Logs. I imagined Dad giving us crisp green bills from his wallet and kisses on the head in the morning while we ate soggy corn flakes.
“Maybe they know we’re up here,” Matthew said. “And they’re just waiting.”
Mom shifted on the couch and murmured something. Dad looked up in our direction. We shrank back into the shadows. I could feel Luke’s breath near my left ear.
We didn’t hear Dad until he’d reached the bottom of the stairs. He flicked on the hall light and caught us, crouched on the top steps, wishing we were somewhere else. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it a second later. He walked heavily up the creaking stairs, the way you do when it’s bedtime, and there’s company over. We pressed ourselves against the wall to let him pass.
“Hi, Dad,” Luke said, like he’d just strolled in from work.
“You kids should be in bed,” Dad said just before opening the attic door. He flicked the light on. Cold air rushed past him, engulfing us. We pulled ourselves into cannonballs and listened to the swipe of Dad’s shoes, then a cardboard box, against the wooden floor.
Matthew was the first to get up and follow Dad into the attic. The rest of us followed. The floor froze the bottoms of my feet as I stood there watching Dad pull wrapped presents out of big, dented cardboard boxes and pile them onto Matthew’s outstretched arms. Our names were scrawled in Mom’s handwriting, strong and smooth, not frail and wavering. She must have bought and wrapped them while we were at school, or summer camp; when she had red hair, and green eyes. I wondered if she knew, then, that something was growing in her belly, breaking her down, like a lichen in the crevices of a rock. Josh picked at the pink insulation. Luke looked around the attic as if he’d never seen the place before. Sean blew on his cupped hands. When the pile reached Matthew’s chin, he handed it off to Luke, who took it and edged over to the half-warm doorway.
When we were all loaded up, frozen-footed and numb-fingered, Dad scooped up the last pile of packages and led the way downstairs. He stood at the bottom of the steps, gifts under one arm, the other outstretched, in case someone took a header down the steps.
Mom swiveled her head around when she heard us shuffling in, then shot Dad one of those “you’re in big trouble” looks that Luke’s always getting. Dad looked away.
“So much for the magic of Christmas,” Mom said. I glanced at the stacks of gifts under the tree and pictured Johnny in the morning, tear-ing into one, tossing it aside, tearing into the next one. Somewhere, stacked in shoeboxes, reels of film remembered the boys and me doing that, at his age. Dad tapped his watch, then jabbed his thumb upstairs. I kissed my fingers and touched them to Mom’s warm, velvety head on my way to bed.
As I neared the top step, the invisible cloud of cold air lingering in the hall passed through my warm skin to settle on my bones, and I tried not to imagine Christmas next year, and the years after that, when I’d be living my own life.
KARENMARY PENN
“The Christmas after my mom died, my dad had some trouble locating our stockings, so he improvised. On Christmas morning, my brothers and I found six plastic Jewel-Osco bags hanging in front of the chimney, each containing a roll of quarters, a Maglite flashlight, and a Cadbury Easter egg. My dad had scrawled a name on each bag with a black Magic Marker. We all laughed, but the image stuck in my mind. This story is about that splintering of tradition.”
