Musing.

A woman in her mid-70s, married once when she was 55, divorced when she was 56. Her adolescent years of turning down men simply because they were not "good enough" (not sure what she's picky about yet), and her fear of marriage and commitment as she sees her father beat her mother for defending their children, and how her mother wasted away in silence. Her overwhelming loneliness at her mother's death caused her to marry the first man who touched her: the masseur who had done massage therapy for her mother before her death, and the pain of realizing her mistake as the man swindled her money (he had none of his own after his first divorce) and secretly brought prostitutes into their bed when she was taking care of her ill father next door.

A young girl, around 7 or 8, sitting at her grandfather's coffin, trying to remember the war stories he told her on her birthday after he had given her two porcelain ducks. How, as a general fighting the war against the Communists and the no-good fucking Japanese bastards, he rode a beautiful white horse. How he gave up the white horse to blend in with the rest of his soldiers, so that the damn Communists and the no-good fucking Japanese bastards would stop fucking aiming at him, goddamn it. How when you hear the whistling of a bomb coming your way, you hit the dirt and make sure to keep your mouth open or your eardrums will explode. How in all of the many fucking years he had been fighting wars, he was never once hit by a bullet. How he saved the lives of his cowardly men and let them go free when it was treason to run from war. How, when he was ill, and his soldiers were beginning to retreat, he asked two men to hoist him up the mountain to fight for the safety of their country. And she would remember how he held her close, and told her how he wasted away after he fled for his family's safety. How he could never tell his family that he loved them. And how, for the first time in his life, he could hold a child close and tell her that she was special, and the name he gave her was nontraditional for a female because females weren't supposed to follow the naming protocol for sons, because she was his favorite.