Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was always and never by herself. Days and days, hours and hours within them, and days within weeks, at the end of which she might not ever have gotten completely dressed or read any word longer than Chex, any word not ending in -os, or formed a sentence or brushed her teeth or left a single footprint outside the house. Just motherhood,

“Forgive me, Dellarobia. It’s a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.”

It’s true you do learn more from listening to others than in talking.