By this time my mind was in a mess. Whom should I choose? The Dean of Instruction or a man who could build kitchens?

The black raindrops still fell with a persistent madness out of a clear evening sky, surrounding me with a harsh and jarring clatter.

Through the rain, I suddenly caught sight of the silent silhouette of my mother leaning forward, stepping lightly on tiptoe, at the entrance to our street – a woman unswayed in her conviction, seeking light under the combined oppressiveness of the real rain and of the black rain that falls in human life. To her, the drenched figure of her daughter in the distance was a small slip of flame threatened by the flood around her – a flame that inspired her to rise to her toes in a dance of body and spirit upon the stage of human life.

2 My One-Eyed Nanny…

Our most profound self-denial comes when

we say yes to our fathers and yes to our lives.

When I heard my father shouting, the rain suddenly stopped.

Like a baby's crying, which has no prelude or progression from sobs to outpouring of tears, this rain began unannounced, and it ceased just as abruptly. There was no gradual diminution in its intensity, nor did the dark clouds slowly dissipate. To me it seemed as if the raindrops suddenly decided, in mid-flight, to stop their descent, probably because of my father's ability to fill them with terror.

Frightened, I stopped and pulled on my mother's sleeve. "Mama?"

Looking up at the heavy, now rainless sky and forcibly staying her own tears, she put her arm around my shoulders, and we resumed our steps homeward.

That she didn't want to say anything to me made me realize that she and Father had been quarreling again.