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What does the reader learn about the narrator's mother in the exposition of the story "The Leap"?

In the exposition, the reader of "The Leap" learns that the narrator's mother, Anna Avalon, is a very resourceful woman, as well as a quick thinker.


Central to the theme of this story is the mother's remark to her daughter that she would be 



...amazed at how many things a person can do within the act of falling.



While it does feel as though time slows while one is mid-air, Anna Avalon means that



...in that awful doomed second [when the circus tent collapsed], she could think, for she certainly did.



When lightning struck the main pole of the circus tent, her husband Harry, who was toppled forward from his swing as the tent buckled swept past her, Anna of the Flying Avalons could have caught his ankle and fallen with him, but, instead, she changed direction by twisting her body toward a heavy wire which she grabbed and held despite the burns to her hands.
Three people died this night, but Anna Avalon survived because of her quick thinking. She opted to live rather than to die with her husband, who was plummeting to the ground.

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