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It feels like I’m trapped inside my body. It decides when I get hungry, and when I’ll get my period. From birth to death, you have to keep eating and making money just to stay alive. I see what working every night does to my mom. It takes it out of her. But what’s it all for? Life is hard enough with just one body. Why would anyone ever want to make another one? I can’t even imagine why anyone would bother, but people think it’s the best thing ever. Do they, though? I mean, have they ever really thought about it? When I’m alone and thinking about this stuff, it makes me so sad. At least for
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“What can I do? We gotta eat, right?” That’s when I said it. It’s your fault for having me. I realized something after that, though. It’s not her fault she was born. I’ve already decided. I’m never having kids. No way. I was thinking about saying sorry. I really wanted to. But then it was too late. Mom had to go to work.
“Wow. Well, I know there’s no end to the crap we could say about Mom, but for a woman on her own,” Makiko said solemnly, “she really did everything she could.”
It’s not our fault that we have eggs and sperm, but we can definitely try harder to keep them from meeting.
“Mom.” A cluster of the word and everything it meant fell from her mouth.
The first words Midoriko ever vocalized in this entire book so far, & it's "mom"...
How it's such a simple, commonplace & universal word, but here, it captures so name complicated feelings & emotions & thoughts that must be zooming thru both Midoriko’s and her mom's mind.
Motherhood, womanhood, daughterhood.
“Why . . . ” she started, “do that to yourself . . . ” she spat out, breaking the second egg over her head, same as the last one. Yolk and white oozed down her forehead. Without hesitation, she grabbed another egg. “You’re the one who had me,” she told Makiko. “And it’s too late to do anything about that now, but why do you have to . . . ” Midoriko slapped the egg hard against her forehead. “I don’t know what to do, and you don’t tell me anything. I love you, but I never want to be like you. No . . . ” She took a breath. “I want to start working, so I can help. I want to help so bad. With
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This made me cry so much on the airplane because it resonated so deeply, 1 always say the must simple het complicated relations hip is the one between a woman & her mom. Here, midonko experiences grief guilt resentment & deep sadness all at once for her mother & even though she feels all these complicated feelings, it boiled down the test that, at the end of the day, that's still her mom, and she loves her.
“Sure, it’ll be fine, definitely.” Komi was in her smile. So was Mom. The face was familiar. Smiling at me.
Every woman who existed before you in your line is with you always. When you are judging her, you are judging those who came before her & you are discrediting all of them. They are all there. Be kind & give women your grace & patience& empathy, for there is no one else who can truly understand us, besides ourselves.
“Then there are the real bastards, like my ex,” she shook her head. “He went around, patting himself on the back, like he’s so much better than all those men. ‘I know the pain that women feel, I respect women. I’ve written papers about it, I know where all the landmines are. My favorite author is Virginia Woolf’ and all that . . . So fucking what, though, right? How many times did you clean the house last month? How many times did you cook? How many times did you go grocery shopping?”
“People are willing to accept the pain and suffering of others, limitless amounts of it, as long as it helps them to keep on believing in whatever it is that they want to believe. Love, meaning, doesn’t matter.”
I realized that I’d never asked my mom about her early life, before she was a mother.
