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There is a flash in her eyes as she expects to be rejected yet again. How is it possible after all that she has been through that she can still let people hurt her?
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There have been circuses from the times of the Romans and Greeks, our traditions centuries old. We had survived the Middle Ages, the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War. We would survive this, too.
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Gerda sends Astrid flying back, then swings to her own board. Astrid soars now like a rider taming a wild beast, bending the trapeze to her own will. She spins by her ankles, by a lone knee, barely touching the bar to which I always cling fast. Gerda watches Astrid with disinterest, almost distaste. She and the other women do not like Astrid. Within days of arriving, I heard the whispers: they resent Astrid for returning and taking her spot at the top of the aerial act while they had worked for years, and for coupling up with Peter, one of the few eligible men the war had left. The girls at the home were much the same, sniping and whispering behind each other’s backs. Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough? But if Astrid notices their coldness, she doesn’t seem to mind. Or perhaps she just doesn’t have need for any of them. She certainly doesn’t need me.
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There is so little one can be certain of these days . . . But finding a hand to hold while we walk this path makes even the most difficult of times better and the strangest of villages home . . . Once I thought my life was over . . . I never thought I would find happiness again . . . And then I met you and it all changed. You made me believe again that good things were possible. I love you.
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I near the practice hall and pause, trying to push down my dread. Though I have trained with Astrid every day, I still have not let go and flown. Each day I wait for her to give up and tell me to leave. Come back tomorrow, she simply says.
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Though Dutch, I was considered of Aryan race and my child -- otherwise shamed as uneheliches Kind, conceived out of wedlock -- might just be accepted into the Lebensborn program and raised by a good German family.
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His kind of courage was boundless, though, and he would not have turned away a person in need, whether a star performer or a simple laborer or a child such as Theo with no skills at all. It was not about the circus or family connections, but human decency. Herr
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The truth is sometimes the very opposite from what you expect it to be.
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Conversations in French bubble around me like a long-forgotten perfume I am desperate to inhale. Familiar words trickle back, first in a stream then a river, though I've scarcely heard them in half a century.
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And Ruth said, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
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We cannot change who we are. Sooner or later we will all have to face ourselves.
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Woods in the predawn darkness, the silence only broken by the sloshing of his flask.
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It’s as though for just a few minutes her flawless exterior cracked open a bit, and I could see the love and hurt inside.
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Empty, what was to stop vagrants, or even.
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Makes even the most difficult of times better and the strangest of villages home.
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“Don't judge," I say, the rebuke in my voice sharper than I intended. "Sometimes the running just gets to be too much.
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Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough?
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He says at last, bidding me good evening as though it were.
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Though no one speaks of it, I sometimes wonder if we are marching toward extinction with each performance, too busy dancing and flying through the air to see it.
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His sadness resonated with me and we were drawn to one another.
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There is so little one can be certain of these days,” he begins, voice wobbly. “But finding a hand to hold while we walk this path.
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I don't. We each have free will. There may be higher purpose, but the actual path each of us takes to get there, and whether we choose to accept it at all, is up to us." She turns to me. "If you can't let go of that fear of making the wrong decision, you will never be able to take the chances you must take to live life fully.
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Krakow the city of Kings, was no longer mine. I had become a foreigner in the place i had always called home
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I see my own mother now, as clearly as I had the day she watched me leave. She should have fought for me, protected me with her life.