lepetitdragonvert:

The Wild Swans and Others Stories

1922

Artist : Elenore Abbott

cocainejuul:

You truly never forget a genuinely kind hearted teacher. When I was in 4th grade my mom went into deep depression for a while and basically had no energy to do my hair anymore aside from brushing it and since it was really long it’d be a knotted mess by the end of the day and my teacher took note and one day asked if I’d like for her to start doing my hair every morning and I happily agreed. From then on while all my classmates had breakfast I’d go into class early and she’d do my hair any way I wanted. She even took a curling iron to curl it for me and got me the prettiest butterfly shaped hair clips because she knew I loved butterflies. Mrs Templeton I love you and still think about you 14 years later…

woolfpuppy:

jockpercabeth:

i love girls with no ‘maternal warmth’. girls who are affectionate in awkward ways. girls who are not ‘caregivers’ so much as care needers. girls who mean well but come across as assholes. girls who don’t mean well. girls who cry a lot but it isn’t ‘cute’ it’s just annoying. girls who aren’t always the most beautiful one in the room. girls who are obnoxious. girls who kind of suck but u can’t help but love them bc they really are just trying,

It’s 2008. I’m in O'Hare (Chicago airport) around Christmas time, absolutely tired from a 36+ hours of travel from Lithuania. My flight to North Dakota has just been cancelled by a region-wide snowstorm. My cell phone and credit cards aren’t working because I haven’t called to have them turned back on/authorized for the US. I’m so tired and a little delirious, and coming down with a cold. I just want to get home and see my family. I shuffle into the line for the airline to see what can be done about my flight, but the line is long and I am already defeated. Tears leak from my eyes intermittently from tiredness, helplessness, and self pity.

A business woman in the line turns around. She introduces herself, frowning a little because this is so against whatever code she lives her life by. She explains she’s a pharmaceutical exec from New Jersey and that she is visiting some distant relative in North Dakota, and was on the same (now cancelled) flight as me. She hands me an apple and protein bar and says something like ‘I have no maternal instinct. I do not have children and I do not want them. But you are so clearly out of your depth here I feel compelled to help you in some way.’ She helps me book a room in the airport hotel and trusts I will pay her back when I get home (which I do). She pays for a meal we have together, in which she mostly talks about how she climbed the ladder at her corporate job.

The whole incident now seems like a fever dream because I truly was sleep deprived and loony. This woman emphasized many times how she was not a caretaker, she was not a warm person. Indeed she was not gregarious or solicitous. But she also very very much was deeply kind to me, much to her own surprise I think. 0 percent maternal, but my extreme patheticness really drew out something she didn’t know was in her.

I hope she has continued to have a great child-free life.

gingerbreadfrosting: