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Cat is Currently Reading

Cat is currently reading

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

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Nov 09, 2025 07:39PM

“There's no reason why you can't have another child." Laski listened numbly. He thinks that's what has been at stake, our wish for a child, any child, not this particular child who swung down the road between us. They can't know how special he was. They point to the future. But we're here, forever, now. The nurse slipped Diane onto the wheeled table. "I have a needle for you," said the nurse. "No," said Diane, still refusing any anesthetic. "It's to dry up your milk," said the nurse.”
― William Kotzwinkle, Swimmer in the Secret Sea

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“What if having a hard time adjusting to motherhood wasn’t some moral failure or a failure of imagination? What if we thought of the whole endeavor like we do work? Like how a career starts out with a lot of dues-paying, a lot of indignity, a lot of feeling unappreciated and complaining to your friends but then incrementally gets easier or more fulfilling. You get better at it. It becomes part of you. And you start to think, Well, what else would I do all day?”
― Meaghan O'Connell, And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

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“My wife wrote me letters when we first met. We would meet every day, or nearly every day, but still she would write me letters. She thought the person she was in her letters was someone she herself did not know until the letter was written, and then it was like she was meeting herself.”
― Jesse Ball, Census

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“With stuff this big, almost any way of looking at it can be true. We all talked like we were going to eventually reach some grand conclusion, some correct stance, but in fact it was different for everybody, impossible to pin down. Was childbirth traumatic or transcendent? Was pregnancy a time of wonder and awe or a kind of temporary disability? Were we supposed to fit our lives around our children or fit our children into our lives? My feelings changed every minute, depending on my mood and on the company I kept. It felt essential, though, to keep asking the question.”
― Meaghan O'Connell, And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

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“I don't think that my wife was disappointed by my son. I don't think that she blamed herself, or blamed me. Her understanding of things was richer than that. But I do know that she sometimes wished we could have done more. There were things she had hoped to do, and now it is clear, now that she is dead; we simply did not do those things and won't. I suppose this is true of children in general, of any children, but it seems especially true of a child who must be cared for permanently. I never apologized to her for him, and she likewise never said anything to me about it. If such a feeling of unhappiness existed, it would only have been in the abstract, for the particulars were: we felt lucky to have had him, and lucky to become the ones who were continually with him, caring for him. I have read some books of philosophy in which the freedom of burdens is explained, that somehow we are all seeking some appropriate burden. Until we find it, we are horribly shackled, can in fact scarcely live.”
― Jesse Ball, Census

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