Pau Peidro

“I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree....Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“Adoption, I was to learn although not immediately, is hard to get right.
As a concept, even what was then its most widely approved narrative carried bad news: if someone "chose" you, what does that tell you?
Doesn't it tell you that you were available to be "chosen"?
Doesn't it tell you, in the end, that there are only two people in the world?
The ones who "chose" you?
And the other who didn't?
Are we beginning to see how the word "abandonment" might enter the picture? Might we not make efforts to avoid such abandonment? Might not such efforts be characterized as "frantic"? Do we want to ask ourselves what follows? Do we need to ask ourselves what words come next to mind? Isn't one of those words "fear"? Isn't another of those words "anxiety"?”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“In theory momentos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights