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Then I understood I would never marry him. It’s funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one’s past, or one’s clothes, but then—a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.
This is what I want to think. This is what I think.
And then I realized that even in her books, she was not telling exactly the truth, she was always staying away from something. Why, she could barely say her name! And I felt I understood that too.
But early on I saw this: You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.
It was the sound of my mother’s voice I most wanted; what she said didn’t matter.
I have said before: It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.
“It’s not my job to make readers know what’s a narrative voice and not the private view of the author,” and that alone made me glad I had come.
Never ever defend your work. This is a story about love, you know that.
This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. But if you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this: You’re not doing it right.”
Perhaps she forgot. I don’t think she has.
The doctor said that almost everyone came in the first time and said they looked like their mother and didn’t want to.
I took no offense, and really, I take none now. But I think: No one in this world comes from nothing.
I kept thinking how the five of us had had a really unhealthy family, but I saw then too how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another’s hearts.
But I’ve known other women whose children did not visit them, and I’ve never blamed those children and I don’t blame my own, although it breaks my heart.
The rage of my girls during those years! There are moments I try to forget, but I will never forget. I worry about what it is they will never forget.
