Mothercare Quotes

“After my father died, I couldn’t stop crying. I wore a shirt of his to sleep in for over a month. I went into a mourning that hasn’t entirely ended. Long after my father died, I felt he, something of him, was lodged slightly above my heart. It was a physical sensation. Sometimes in an old-style southern Italian restaurant, like Lanza’s in the East Village, I would order veal parmigiana because he loved it. I would imagine him eating it, tasting it, I could see his face then as he chewed with delight, and felt I was tasting it for and with him. Swallowing was hard.”
― Lynne Tillman, Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence

“My life felt narrower, and not my own. I gave up some of my life, that’s the kind of thought I had, common to us who don’t want to do what we feel obliged to do. A sacrifice.”
― Lynne Tillman, Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence