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Then my mother died

My father inforreat deal was made clear to me A nosed with uterine cancer She had delayed surgery--a total abdo to cast a shadow over this occasion Postoperative biopsies had revealed that the cancer was an aggressive and rare adenosarcoma that left her with no hope of recovery By winter, she hadto be done It was,desire that the son she loved so ress toward the fulfillo aboutShe had died teeks previously, her ashes buried without funereal pageant, in accordance with her wishes She had not sufferedthoughts of me that she had traveled into the life to cory withthis secret from you If it’s any consolation, I wanted you to know, but your mother wouldn’t hear of it When I told you that day at the bus to leave us behind, those were her words, not h she eventually made ether, I believe, but never for a reat love of her life She wanted only as best for you, her Tie you to wait I a reasonably well, under the circumstances, and can see no reason for you to interrupt your studies for ould be, in the end, a painful distraction that would serve no purpose I love you, son I hope you know that, and that you can forgive ive us both--and that e nextbut to celebrate your triu in the front hallway of the house of a wo around ust when I was nineteen years old What I experienced is nothing I have words for, and I will not ; I wanted to scream at him until my throat ripped open, until et on a bus to Ohio, go straight to the house, and strangle him in his bed--the bed he had shared with my mother for nearly thirty years and where, no doubt, I had been conceived But I did neither I realized I was hungry The body wants what it wants--a useful lesson--and I availed myself of the old woman’s larder to lass of the same milk she left in saucers all around the house The milk had turned, but I drank it anyway, and that is what I remember most vividly of all: the taste of sour milk

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The remainder of the summer passed in an e me that I had been placed in Winthrop House with an as-yet-unna froross understate with the old woman and her dirty litter boxes About ht up until the first day of the new seht findto distractwith hi the academic year, but I turned him down Perhaps this was unwise, and he seee, but it would leave no ti silence I missed

I coed so radically that I recall it as a kind of plunge, as if I had beenon the surface of my life until then This commenced the day I moved into Winthrop House Lucessi and I had sold off our Salvation Army furniture, and I arrived with little o, a desk laain slipped into an anonyed my name if I wanted to with nobody the wiser My quarters, two rooed railroad-apartment-style with a bathroo the Winthrop quadrangle, with a view of Boston’s n of my room over which space to choose as my own--the interior room was smaller but more private; on the other hand, I would have to endure h at all hours to the toilet--before deciding that, to get things off on the right foot, I would await his arrival, so that we ether