The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing.

If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully.

But the other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive. Sons did not hear their mothers’ stories after weaning.

And now you come to me—women with hands and feet as soft as a queen’s, with more cooking pots than you need, so safe in childbed and so free with your tongues. You come hungry for the story that was lost. You crave words to fill the great silence that swallowed me, and my mothers, and my grandmothers before them.

She was good the way milk is good, the way rain is good.

In the red tent we knew that death was the shadow of birth, the price women pay for the honor of giving life. Thus, our sorrow was measured.

I did not matter to her the way she mattered to me.

“Remember this moment, when your mother’s body heals every trouble of your soul.”

I moved my arms through the water, feeling them float on the surface, watching the waves and wake that followed my gesture. Here was magic, I thought. Here was something holy.

For a moment I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, but the thought passed quickly. I could only be what I was. And I was a woman.

Egypt loved the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved. Thus can something as insignificant as a name—two syllables, one high, one sweet—summon up the innumerable smiles

Women’s accomplishments, until the very recent past, have been “written” on the bread they baked, the clothing they fashioned, the children they bore and reared. These are monuments that crumble into dust and that is where imagination took over.