Family Alternative

Family Alternative

When they put it like this, he knew that circumstances could easily turn into a medieval enumeration of plenty in the eye of the beholder, the same thing he had to drag his own boyish eyes through, poring over those books that throw a Latin maxim at you every other sentence as a gauntlet, not as a ball to play catch with. He could not lose face and his accomplished modernity, with its hearty dash of tolerance ready to nix the unsubtle smack of double standards, over this proposal. But he has worked hard to get here. There could be no doubt in his mind that every step was well-deserved. He had to sign it. Then he could sleep on it, not the other way around. We live in dangerous times, where opinions are as volatile as quarks, and it's important to recognize a lasting opportunity when it presents itself in this matter-of-fact, easy manner. He had to become a mouthpiece, the mouthpiece, due to his track record. He could adjust, he could inform, he could not get rid of the notion of plenty. Every month, like clockwork. He had children to put through college. He had a wife on the other side of the Atlantic, carefully nudging the ashes of genocide, afraid to stir them into a galloping scatter. Despite the theme of progress and strong women the world has seen in the past two and a half decades, he had to be the breadwinner. He muttered a few words to himself, to sample them in his mouth, the words that may become a major problem, the words that having an open mind may not temper. "Now take a step back for a moment" – saying this worked for him before, but not before this. Then he tried, externally: "I wish I could take your stance, don't think I'm enjoying this", and internally: "one may need to regress to make allowances for the future."