Oeil-de-chat

Les petites filles ne sont petites et mignonnes qu’aux yeux des adultes. Entre elles, elles ne sont pas si mignonnes. Elles sont grandeur nature.

Les insectes sont là depuis plus longtemps que les humains, ils ont plus d'expérience que nous quant à la survie et ils sont aussi beaucoup plus nombreux. De toute façon, à en juger par la bombe et la façon dont le choses vont, on nous aura fait sauter d'ici la fin du siècle. L'avenir appartient aux insectes.

Le nouveau drapeau national y flotte aussi, deux bandes rouges et une feuille d'érable rouge plaquée sur du blanc, rappelant davantage la marque d'une margarine bon marché ou un massacre de hibou sur la neige.

Jon avait du potentiel, mais c'est un mot que l'on ne peut pas utiliser en toute quiétude. Le potentiel est rangé sur une étagère.

Comme toujours, ce serait stupide de ma part de lui laisser voir ma propre sentimentalité, ma faiblesse à son égard.

Boys get teased for having younger sisters, or sisters of any kind, or mothers; it's like having new clothes. When he gets anything new my brother dirties it as soon as possible, to avoid having it noticed; and if he has to go anywhere with me and my mother, he walks ahead of us or crosses to the other side of the street. If he's teased about me, he will have to fight some more. For me to contact him, or even to call him by name, would be disloyal. I understand these things, and do my best.
So I am left to the girls, real girls at last, in the flesh. But I'm not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don't know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.

I remember thinking when the girls were born, first one and then the other, that I should have had sons and not daughters. I didn't feel up to daughters, I didn't know how they worked. I must have been afraid of hating them. With sons I would have known what to do: frog-catching, fishing, war strategies, running around in the mud. I would have been able to teach them how to defend themselves, and what from. But the world of sons has changed; it's more likely to be the boys now with that baffled look, like a night-dweller gone blind in sunlight. 'Stand up for yourself like a man,' I would have said. I would have been on shifty ground.

My brother Stephen is here and there. (...) At one point he gets married, which is announced by a postcard from San Francisco, with the Golden Gate Bridge and a sunset on it, and, 'Got married. Annette sends regards.' This is all I hear about it until several years later, when he sends a postcard of the Statue of Liberty from New York, which says: 'Got divorced.' I assume he has been puzzled by both events, as if they're not something he's done himself, on purpose, but things that have happened to him accidentally, like stubbing your toe. I think of him as walking into marriage as into a park, in a foreign country, at night, unaware of the possibilities for damage.