After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her.The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.
اللهم اعنا على بر أمهاتنا ، و اجعل ما يُثقل الغير طيبا ً، طبيبا ً يُريح القلب ، آمين
Curioso como a mãe do Gil, sem saber ler nem escrever, compreendera que Gil tinha de pintar, absolutamente de pintar, nem que para isso ela tivesse de se sacrificar, de se estafar, de morrer. Intuição e grandeza nascem com as pessoas, do mesmo modo que o talento. A sua mãe não fora dessas mulheres. Não que lhe não quisesse bem, esse querer bem, que corresponde a ver realizados nos filhos os sonhos que não soube realizar.
I went into the living room and looked down at my mother’s torn body and shook my head. It was surreal. I guess some people in that situation would have crumbled, some would have cried, but I’d emotionally disconnected from life a long time ago. For that, I had to thank the skeletal bitch on the floor, with her greedy rodent soul and her short-tempered ape-mate in the kitchen. If anything, her death was a belated answer to old prayers, with a bit of an unexpected mess.
As a child, my mother told me not to talk to strangers. I did my best to obey. She hadn’t realized that everyone is a stranger to the part of us that makes us who we truly are. The part of us that prays for the rest in ways we cannot comprehend. In a sense, we are our own monsters, lying in wait under our own beds--our own angels and demons. The lives we lead will judge us. This is as natural as the sun rising and setting, something that happens whether or not we’re alive.
The expression in her eyes was bitter as nightshade. 'You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.
She expected a lot of me. When I was in fourth grade working on a book report, she made me start the whole thing over when she read it and said it was barely even legible. "What's wrong with it?" I asked her. "It's not good enough yet. You have to try harder," she said, her voice gentle. "You have to try hard at everything you do. That's all I ask." I rolled my eyes and revised it, and over time her approach wore off on me and I became like her too - wanting to do my best, expecting my best.
الوطن ليس ظلا ، الوطن صورة يحضر جانبا منها هنا ، ويحضر آخر هناك ، في الجهة الأخرى حيث أمي
I have a word to say to my sisters. When I reflect upon the duties and responsibilities devolving upon our mothers and sisters, and the influence they wield, I look upon them as the mainspring and soul of our being here. It is true that man is first. Father Adam was placed here as king of the earth, to bring it into subjection. But when Mother Eve came she had a splendid influence over him. A great many have thought it was not very good; I think it was excellent" (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 199).).
She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.
My mother picked me up in her arms, touching my checks comforting my distress. I stared into her eyes and held her hair in my small hands, for the first time realizing what a moment in time meant. I touched her cheek and then looked away, knowing this was the truth to life, and there was nothing I could do about it. The truth that her death would one day occur made me realize that I never wanted her to leave my side. It was something I could not control, something no one could ever stop no matter how strong they were.
The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart. But even when everyone was pitching in, we never got out from under all the work. I loved that ranch, though sometimes it did seem that instead of us owning the place, the place owned us.
Your mother, my mother, and mother of pearl walk into a bar, and the bartender says, “Hello, dad, you look more like whiskey than I remember. Have you been tanning?” To which all three mothers respond, “The French Revolution was the best thing to ever happen inside a croissant the shape of the Fertile Crescent, with a flaky crust like a politician with dandruff.” Of course, when Orafoura told me this joke, I didn’t laugh, because I don’t like jokes involving politics, religion, or mother of pearl.
So the peasants are used as targets in war?” I doubted. “Does the Overhead feel that is necessary to kill off one of their own? Peasants are being placed as diversions on the front line like they mean nothing—”“Would you rather save the strong, or spare the weak?” Mother questioned me.“Why can we not do both?” I returned.“Because Heaven has its reasons, Anastasia,” Mother chimed quietly. “It is Heavens way to balance those who are strong and those who are weak. It cannot be changed.
Babies of around one year old are often active by day and wake frequently at night, for no obvious reason. Then a mother can feel desparate for sleep yet equally desparate to comfort her baby when he needs her at night. I have spoken to many mothers who have sacrificed their own sleep, waking up numerous times every night because their babies cried for them. It seems terrible that these hardworking women think of themselves as failures as a result. Surely a mother who has chosen to sacrifice her sleep deserves respect and admiration for her generous mothering.
