I suffer from CLAUSTROPHOBIA, a fear of closed spaces.For example, I’m petrified that the WINE store will be closed before I have time to get there!!!

A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.

Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons.

Anything of worth is costly: devotion to Christ, a strong marriage, financial responsibility, a life of integrity, and of course, fearlessly feminine mothering.

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

The silence stretched out between us as I stared at him, the tears blurring my vision as I waited for him to save me from this torment. Surely he could find a way.

A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.

Aku ibunya, ya dari sekian anak. Jadi kan tahu, yang satu butuh apa, yang lain memerlukan apa lain lagi. Adil kan tidak berarti sama rata sama rasa. (Yuniati, p.115)

Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.

You are everything you should be, and all that is enough. Be proud of who you are, and love who you will become.” – Lady Lalaigne to Nhakira, “Chosen

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.

At a certain point in her life, she realises it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.

One unforeseen advantage of having a  child was that it gave me the excuse to talk to myself to my heart's content and pretend it was for my daughters benefit.

At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.