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1 " makes us no promises, no guarantees. Things move toward us whether we want them or not. Accidents occur, illnesses strike, and bombs fall. One street can be pulverized, the next one over not even scratched. Chance is so shifty and arbitrary. "
― Ann Howard Creel , While You Were Mine
2 " If my father hadn’t come to America about 35 years ago, I’d be starving in Poland . . . I’d be sobbing in France . . . I’d be stealing in Greece . . . I’d be shivering in Belgrade . . . I’d be slaving in Frankfurt . . . I’d be hiding in Prague . . . I’d be buried in Russia. But here he was, alive and walking on his own two feet. "
3 " Separately we might have sunk, but together we moved beyond bloodlines and nationalities and backgrounds and formed a vessel that somehow stayed afloat. "
4 " If life was really a journey, then children had to be the center of the wheel that moved it. "
5 " POW camp, he’d imagined a sweet life in a tidy house, Alice "
6 " After paying Lisen what Alice owed her, I was cash poor. And the full rent for the apartment sat on my shoulders like a lead weight. I had to find a reliable roommate who would share expenses and accept that an infant lived in the place, too. I started by posting a notice on the bulletin board at the hospital. Soon after, a nurse who was interested contacted me and we met over lunch. Dot and I sat in the green-walled hospital cafeteria on slatted chairs and opened our sack lunches. A saucy brunette who wore cat-eye glasses and red lipstick along with her fashionably bobbed hair and tweezed, blackened eyebrows, Dot had been sharing an apartment with four other women and wanted more space to herself. I "
7 " The light in Lisen and Geoff’s apartment was warm, as was the atmosphere, and it poured around us like heated cream. "