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Old houses move in their sleep like the dreaming, remembering limbs of very old people. Boards whisper, steps cry out softly to the whispering remembrance of footfalls long gone to earth. Mantelpieces strain gently in the darkness beneath the ghosts of old Christmas stockings. Joists and beams and rafters hunch lightly like the brittle ribs of old women in their sleep: the heart recalling, the worn carpet slippers whispering down the halls again.

Lord save little children! They abide. The wind blows and the rain is cold. Yet, they abide.

As for the medal itself, when I got back home, a question arise for which I really didn't have an answer: What exactly do I do with this thing? I don't know what most of the other recipients do, although I've asked a handful of them. A few have ordered up replacements so that they have something to wear and to show folks when they ask to see it, while they store the original in a safe-deposit box. Others keep the medal in a sock drawer or on their nightstand. As for me, I never bothered to ge a duplicate and I eventually took to carrying the original around in my front pocket. As a result, it's taken several accidental trips through the washing machine, so the gilded surface is a bit tarnished, and the blue ribbon has begun to fade. But that doesn't bother me a bit. In fact, I kind of like it that way, perhaps- in part- because I don't truly regard it as mine.

Like it or not, there are eight other guys with whom I served to whom that medal rightly belongs, because heroes- true heroes, the men whose spirit the medal embodies- don't ever come home. By that definition, I'm not a true hero. Instead, I'm a custodian and a caretaker. I hold the medal, and everything it represents, on behalf of those who are its rightful owners. That, more than anything, is the truth that now sustains me- along with one other thing too, which is a belief I hold in my heart.

I know, without a shred of doubt, that I would instantly trade the medal and everything attached to it if it would bring back even one of my missing comrades in arms.

The very basis of true peace of mind is a benevolent wish to see all the world as happy as one's Self; and from my soul do I pity the selfish churl, who, remembering the little bickerings of anger, envy, and fifty other disagreeables to which frail mortality is subject, would wish to revenge the affront which pride whispers him he has received.

... while discretion points out the impropriety of my conduct, inclination urges me on to ruin.

The mind of youth eagerly catches at promised pleasure: pure and innocent by nature, it thinks not of the dangers lurking beneath those pleasures, till too late to avoid them.

Of all the pleasures of which the human mind is sensible, there is none equal to that which warms and expands the bosom, when listening to commendations bestowed on us by a beloved object, and are conscious of having deserved them.

... the heart that is truly virtuous is ever inclined to pity and forgive the errors of its fellow creatures.

Pleasure is a vain illusion; she draws you on to a thousand follies, errors, and I may say vices, and then leaves you to deplore your thoughtless credulity.

"Autistic is different, not bad. It is not wrong to be different. Sometimes it is hard, but it is not wrong." (p319)

"...One thing nobody can do better than you is be you." (p164)

I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me. (p242)