Three Minutes or Less: Fatima Hoger

Posted At : May 9, 2008 1:00 AM
Related Categories: Personal Narratives

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Excerpted from Lynne Sharon Schwartz's essay in Three Minutes or Less: Life Lessons from America's Greatest Writers from the Archives of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Bloomsbury Publishing, and used by permission.

Read by Fatima Hoger: "As a mother and grandmother, this piece spoke to me because in my neighborhood, kids called me "Mother Protector." I've learned that life is unpredictable, taking its own twists and turns." Fatima was born in Panama. She and her husband Sam have three children; Sam Jr., Sophia, Stephanie and a grandaughter, Kylie. Fatima loves sharing time with family and friends, dancing and traveling. Her favorite place in the world is Boquete.

Writer Lynne Sharon Schwartz loved to make rubber-band balls as a girl, but once she had her own child, she had this reaction:

"It bounced like a dream, as high as you ever could wish, such a lovely thing. So I thought, ... I'll make one for our little girl. ... I imagined her playing with the ball I had made for her, bouncing it on the sidewalk just the way I used to. But then I imagined, What if she dropped it and it rolled into the street where the cars are, she dashed out after it and a car was coming. I tell you, my heart started racing. I couldn't walk. So I didn't make the rubber-band ball after all. I couldn't with what I had pictured in my mind. I had to throw it away. I was so relieved she wouldn't have it."

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