I basically got this literary piece during a book sale in one of the medical symposiums we had organized last 2019. My attention was hooked to the cover as I believe it has enticed me to read such close-to-reality fiction novel, something I have not tried once, so then came this wonderful Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen.
Below are the words, seem adages to me, that struck me to learn and then which led me to writing as I am also as excited to share this on quote with you, my dear readers.
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1. “But don’t ignore the fact that the newest research shows your best chance of being well cared for when you’re aged is having a daughter.” Without a doubt that it is in the genetic framework of females to gear towards the “caring” attributes than its counterpart.
2. “What did Eleanor Roosevelt say? ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent’.” It is what it is, what you allow others do unto you will come as you please. Do not let other makes you feel small since you are created beautifully.
3. “Nodding was good. It was attentive, collegial.” Sometimes agreeing to matters entails courage that you concede peace in conversations which do not have end side.
4. “Bebe had once told her that most men truly wanted to have three different kinds of wives during their lifetimes: the first one, who was to make a home and a family; the dishy trophy wife, who could be enjoyed and then dispensed with when lust paled and died; and the third wife, who would be devoted but still interesting, admiring but not slavish.”
5. “‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’ She actually sometimes thought that was the definition of marriage.”
6. “She’d realized that that was how life was, that certain small moments were like billboards forever alongside the highway of your memory.” There are situations, turned to memories, we either had repressed or suppressed that are still kept and forever cherished.
7. “When they were first married they had vowed they would never be one of those married couples who sat silently at dinner because they’d run out of thing to say.”
8. “They started to look around for middle ground and realized they’d been on parallel paths for so long that there was any.” Some things, as to most, are irreconcilable no matter how hard we try to patch it; we go on an endless, unresolvable circles.
9. “But anyone could tell you, looking at the setup dispassionately, that most people would be incapable of making good choices if they had to make that many choices at the same time, at that particular time of their lives.”
10. “The truth was that some of their marriages were like balloons: a few went suddenly pop, but more often than not the air slowly leaked out until it was a sad, wrinkled thing with no lift to it anymore.”
11. “It was funny, how easy it was to predict the fine points of the future, and how the big things were incomprehensible until they were right there…” We only perfectly dwell on small things to ease our anxiety to a minimum but we still face the big storms in our lives with surprise.
12. “People go through life thinking they’re making decisions, when they’re really just making plans, which is not the same thing at all. And along the way, they get a little damaged, lots of tiny cracks, holding together but damaged still.”
13. “The price so many of them had paid for prosperity was amnesia. They’d forgotten where they’d come from, how they’d started out. They’d forgotten what the city really was, and how small a part of it they truly were.”
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I will give Ms. Anna a thumbs up for a well-written novel that brought me to the streets of New York and elsewhere. She gave me a glimpse of how a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a neighbor, a woman juggles her roles to equality in a busy but fun-to-live-with world of ours.
And not to forget, a wall of appreciation for the author for mentioning my home country, Philippines, in page 182, where the fictional Richard was brought to life.
The symphony was silent, “and instead of the end of a movement, it means the end of the piece.” 🔒
Filliped Writing 