Larger Than Life

by Jodi Picoult

When the matriarch is gone, so is the herd’s collective memory.

The matriarch is a knot that holds together a rope made of many strings. Cut the rope below the knot, and it unravels. I

There is a reason people say being a mother is the hardest job in the world: You do not sleep and you do not get vacation time. You do not leave your work on your desk at the end of the day. Your briefcase is your heart, and you are rifling through it constantly. Your office is as wide as the world, and your punch card is measured not in hours but in a lifetime.

What we could not see clearly, we didn’t have to pretend to understand.