quite a bit of it, but that my father found it and burned it all years ago. My mother — who had been orphaned at the age of six with her brother, their parents having died within one year of each other, her mother of T.B. and her father in a train wreck — was Catholic. My father was a non-practicing agnostic Jew of immigrant parents. His father died when he was eleven years old and left his mother with five children to raise, and run an East Boston grocery store. I came to learn, but not to understand, that my father forbade my mother to practice her religion. His mother had thrown my mother out of her house because she was Catholic. I guess one forbids what is threatening. When I was a young girl, my mother and I would drive out of town, away from New Haven and its environs. She would search for a Catholic church, in whatever city or town we found ourselves. My experience of her religion, besides knowing she kept a crucifix hidden in her scarf and glove drawer, was the empty churches we visited with lighted candles and statues and holy water and the smell of devotion. Sometimes I would see someone in the church, kneeling, fingering rosary beads and saying prayers. I would watch my mother light candles, kneel before the statue of the Virgin Mother, take out her hidden rosary beads and pray. I wondered who and what she prayed for, this devoted woman, denied and forbidden her religion. I had once witnessed my father, in a rage rip apart her amethyst rosary and throw the beads across the room at her. The church was a haven where I was able to see the relief on my mother's face. So often, it seemed to me, she lived in fear of his arm being raised against her, or my brother. When my father would threaten to hit my brother, my mother would place herself between them, taking the blow. On the days that we'd find refuge in a church, I could see her relax, exhale, as though she'd been holding her breath between these visits. It seemed to me that my father was as jealous of her devotion to her religion as he might have been had she been with a lover. This June trip to Knoxville was an unusual one for my mother. Although she traveled all over the world with my father, she rarely traveled alone. This was a week of freedom for her. When she arrived I was studying for my orals and it was a tense time . She expressed her hope to me that perhaps she might finally leave my father and live with me, temporarily, until she knew what she was going to do. I was caught in the worlds of Milton, Shakespeare, Kennedy, King, and my mother's burgeoning hopes of emancipation. The oral exams passed, thesis accepted, bags packed, rented furniture returned, we drove out of Knoxville heading north. We spent the first night of the trip in a motel. Early the following morning we breakfasted on pancakes, coffee, and laughter, and headed home. The sky was clear and I quoted Byron, Yeats, Shakespeare, and Ernest Dowson.   They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,  Love and desire and hate,  I think they have no portion in us after  We pass the gate.  They are not long the days of wine and roses,  Out of a misty dream our paths emerge  Then close within a dream.