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21 " My mother wasn’t perfect. Our relationship was complicated, and difficult. She was my imperfect mother. We were two different people, and found that hard to accept in one another. But I was hers and she was mine. That’s how it had always been. Who would I be, if not hers? I didn’t want to be without her. "
― Ashley C. Ford , Somebody's Daughter
22 " I was sewn into his regrets. "
23 " I knew I couldn’t have the sunrise or its colors for my own. Some things were too precious not to be shared. They just had to happen, and you just had to make sure you were there when they did, and then, you were part of something with everyone else who showed up at the right time. "
24 " I learned to carry the secrets of my badness silently and alone. "
25 " It was easier to laugh at the jokes after you'd forgotten the pain. "
26 " If my mother and I shared anything without having carefully considered it, it was this undying ember of a dream that we will someday, somehow find ourselves reaping the bounty of a blooming mother-daughter bond, the roots of which we both refuse to tend in the meantime. "
27 " I did not mind getting hurt as much as I minded being surprised by the pain. I wanted to see it coming. "
28 " My desire for a physical representation of my father’s love led to me pursuing parental relationships with all kinds of authority figures I came into contact with. They weren’t all aware of their parental status, but they were all important to me. Combined with my mother, they made up the perfect parental figures: proud of me, hard on me, and charmed by me. They were my Danny Tanners, Carl Winslows, and Aunt Beckys. "
29 " We wanted to be good, as all children do, but as young Black children learn sooner than others, we don't all get the chance to be seen that way. "
30 " We were lovers who lived together, trying to find out if we had whatever turned two people in love into the kind of family either of us wanted. "
31 " ... books were a place where my age didn't matter as long as I could read the words in front of me, I found a home for my mind and spirit to take root. "
32 " When I was four years old, I taught myself to lie awake until morning. I wanted the sunrise, and I only had to stay awake to have her. When children are small, our desires seem small, even if we want the sky. Anything we want seems to be only a matter of time and effort away. It’s too early to imagine what’s already holding you back. "
33 " One good friend was enough for me. "
34 " Feeling any of it felt like the beginning of losing control, and losing control felt like certain death in my body, if not my mind. If I didn’t process the feeling, I wouldn’t feel it, and if I didn’t feel it, it couldn’t kill me. "
35 " wear. It doesn’t take long for children to teach themselves not to want what they’ve already learned they won’t have. I couldn’t find a good enough reason to torture myself by acknowledging my futile desires for more stuff. "
36 " I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t, tell on myself. Self-preservation had already been imprinted upon me as a requirement. Honesty was not always the best policy. Grown-ups would tell you it was important to tell the truth, and when you did, everything would work out, but I knew this wasn’t the case. "
37 " I decided to pretend to be good, the kind of good that seemed to be best. The silent kind. "
38 " The sun had risen for me -for me alone- and turned the sky into the painted milk of a soggy bowl of leftover off-brand Lucky Charms. The soft roses and lavenders went on to burn blood orange on the underbellies of clouds. I told my shadow I wanted to keep the sun. My shadow whispered back the instructions for making a memory. I watched the light of day ascend until it hurt my eyes, then I closed them, and taught myself to remember. "
39 " When I turned out the light, nobody guessed I was in there telling myself stories, building safe spaces to go inside my head. They would walk right by me, never knowing I'd been there beside them in the dark. "
40 " I knew how to disappear. Sometimes my mother needed me to disappear. "