Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one.

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.

She lived with several men, but in each of the apartments there were always cardboard boxes, belonging to her, that she never got around to unpacking; just as well, because it was that much easier to move out. When she got past thirty she decided it might be nice to have a child, some time, later. She tried to figure out a way of doing this without becoming a mother.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.

مادرها چه ماهیتی دارند؟ طرح های خام، لولوی سرخرمن، یا عروسک مومی ای که سنجاق به آن بزنند؟ راحتشان نمی گذاریم و وادارشان می کنیم خود را به میل ما، به خاطر گرسنگی، هوس ها و نقص هایمان، شکل دهند. تا وقتی خودم مادر نشدم این را نمی فهمیدم.