Traveler Mother Daughter Travel Quotes

It shocks me how I wish for...what is lost and cannot come back.

We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.

I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up.

My children have always existed at the deepest center of me, right there in the heart/hearth, but I struggled with the powerful demands of motherhood, chafing sometimes at the way they pulled me away from my separate life, not knowing how to balance them with my unwieldy need for solitude and creative expression.

The words were unexpected, but so incisively true. So much of prayer is like that - an encounter with a truth that has sunk to the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to be elevated into the realm of sacredness.

Into every life a little rain must fall.

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.

Destiny. To believe that a life is meant for a single purpose, one must also believe in a common fate. Father to daughter, brother to sister, mother to child. Blood ties can be as unyielding as they are eternal. But it is our bonds of choice that truly light the road we travel. Love versus hatred. Loyalty against betrayal. A person's true destiny can only be revealed at the end of his journey, and the story I have to tell is far from over.

I realize I'm trying to work out the boundaries. How to love her without interfering. How to step back and let her have her private world and yet still be an intimate part of it. When she talks about her feelings, I have to consciously tell myself she wants me to receive them, not fix them.

The two of us praying like this to the Black Madonna Sudenly washes over me, and I'm filled with love for my mother. The best gift she has give me is the constancy of her belief. Whatever I become, she loves me. To her, I am enough.

I am becoming the woman I've wanted, grey at the temples, soft body, delighted, cracked up by life with a laugh that's known bitter but, past it, got better, knows she's a survivor-- that whatever comes, she can outlast it. I am becoming a deep weathered basket. I am becoming the woman I've longed for, the motherly lover with arms strong and tender, the growing up daughter who blushes surprises. I am becoming full moons and sunrises. I find her becoming, this woman I've wanted, who knows she'll encompass, who knows she's sufficient, knows where she's going and travels with passion. Who remembers she's precious, but knows she's not scarce-- who knows she is plenty, plenty to share.

I feel again the hunger to let go of my striving and find the ability to become content and still, intentionally "superfluous," as writer Helen M. Luke puts it. I want a refuge from my old conquering self.

Whatever it is I'm born to do, my fear of failing at it has almost become greater than my desire to figure out what it is.

I would like to be free of the part of me that dares too little and fears too much.

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were the pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs, and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.

But I've discovered being a writer is an ongoing apprenticeship, just like everything else in life that matters to me-being a mother, a wife, a daughter, or simply a woman alive in the world, content to be myself. Today at thirty-two, I am glad to wake up each day and begin.

Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this: 1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)

Ms. came into practice, to give a woman an alternative to being recognized by her marital status, and thereby known as herself. How do I want to be known.

Women who bear the weight of opposition, she wrote, create a shelter for the rest of us.

A woman’s relationship with herself is mirrored everywhere in her life, but no place more than with her daughter.

I learned how easy it is to give up and become draperies while everyone else is dancing.

In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute?

Rebirth is almost impossible without the darkness.....I tell myself I am experiencing the death of myself as mother, the death of myself as a younger woman -- precious old lives going by the wayside. Of course, I should let myself grieve. To deny the grief is to squander a transforming and radiant possibility.

One day i will have to forgive life for ending. I tell myself I will have to learn how to let life be life with its unbearable finality.....just be what ti is.

Readiness for dying arrives by attending the smallest moment and finding the eternal inside of it.

I wonder if that's the perennial story of writers: you find the true light, you lose the true light, you find it again. And maybe again.

There isn’t a woman I know who hasn’t said they wished they’d listened to their mother… especially where the three Big Ms of women’s lives are concerned: mothering, money, and men.

It’s a dangerous thing, to divide yourself, to break off bits of yourself until there’s no solid core. We are, after all, just the sum of our total experiences, each one lying beneath us like a brick in the foundation of a house. To be selective, to block out portions, is to destabilize the very ground on which you stand.

I wonder: instead of retreating and hiding, instead of pining for the way it was, what if I accept the way it is? This strikes me as both the most obvious thing in the world and the most profound.

There were just four things a woman could be (five at most): daughter, wife, mother, widow, and slut. That was it. There were no other roles for them—no free and independent women, no feminism, no selfsufficiency. If you didn’t like it, you could be branded a witch and executed.

When is the impulse to help an adult child a wise intervention and when is it self-serving and prying? I have an uneasy feeling I will have to carry the question around for a while like some grating pebble in my shoe.

I only know there's something unsettling about a door that closes forever. I feel a vague lament about the changing of my body, the alterations in my appearance, the bleeding out of motherhood, the fear that I will not find the mysterious green fuse again.

We tell our daughters we don’t trust them in a thousand ways. We don’t consciously mean to, but we steal their confidence in their own strength by stealing their pain. And their confidence in our strength by saying we aren’t strong enough to see them struggle.

Yet I remember the rule I set for myself-that I do something different from my mother. . . I started to believe I couldn't really do that if I was following in the path of either of my parents... That so-called rule helped me separate more fully from my mother and father, I realize, but maybe it also kept me from seeing what was right in front of me.

Every poem is a love poem, my dad had said. I'd always thought he meant romantic love...but there were so many kinds of great love: mother and daughter love. Father love. Best friend love. Aunt love. Mother's best friend love. Friendish friendesque love. Love for the living and love for the dead. Love for who you really are, for those weird parts of yourself that only a few people understand. Love for things you yearn to do, for putting words in a page. Love for traveling, for people and seeing new ways to live. Love for the world...

It was respect she had for feelings, how she believed it was inimical to the soul to deny them.

Claire: Once your baby arrives, the world is no more the same than you are. Because from our very bodies we add to the collective human destiny.

When she talks about her feelings, I have to consciously tell myself she wants me to receive them, not fix them.

The third message was from my mother. 'Why me?' she said. 'Why do I have to have a daughter who finds dead bodies? Where did I go wrong? Emily Beeber's daughter never finds dead bodies. Joanne Melanowski's daughter never finds dead bodies. Why me!' News travels fast in the Burg.

fix it. But I know my impulse to tear open the closed, secret place in my daughter comes from a need to stave off my own fear. When is the impulse to help an adult child a wise intervention

Claire: One of the hallmarks of a mother-daughter relationship is what I call the Zero to Sixty Factor. We can get instantly irritated at each other and just as instantly move on… Men don’t get this. Paul will say, “Girls, stop fussing,” and we’ll immediately turn and say in unison, “We’re not arguing.

Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade. We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off. And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.

In America, where I live, death has been big business since the turn of the twentieth century. A century has proven the perfect amount of time for its citizens to forget what funerals once were: family- and community-run affairs. In the nineteenth century no one would have questioned Josephine’s daughter preparing her mother’s body—it would have seemed strange if she didn’t. No one would have questioned a wife washing and dressing the body of her husband or a father carrying his son to the grave in a homemade coffin. In an impressively short time, America’s funeral industry has become more expensive, more corporate, and more bureaucratic than any other funeral industry on Earth.

These are the kinds of regrets all women have, mistakes and missteps, paths not chosen, opportunities gone. Youth gone. Forever. And until I honestly acknowledge how this regret feels, acknowledge that I’m not okay with how some of my life went, it’s like having a fake past, and a fake present, which is surely a prescription for a fake future.

She has been the keeper of home for me, and I have been the keeper of journey for her. And now we look for the lost portion in each other.

Ann was struggling to figure out the beginning of being a woman, and I, the beginning of the ending of it.

and I would feel it, the momentary eclipse. I tell myself it’s natural for the feeling to surface now, with the two of

us captive in each other’s presence, brought together in a way we haven’t experienced in . . . well, forever.

The human soul needs a divine mother, a feminine aspect to balance out the masculinity of God, and yes, Mary had carried it off the best she could.

more primal layers of creativity I yearn for, and at the same time, taking me down to an irreducible essence, all the way to the severity of my own dying. Down to the gnawed bone.

creativity. I always return to the idea of her virginity, how it symbolizes self-belonging. I believe the possibility of that exists in a woman. It’s

As I form the words, it seems entirely possible that what I wanted all along was to answer the question myself.

What both of you do is important,” says Ann, holding my gaze, and I see she is moved by my outpouring. This telling of secret things.

is new potential in search of ripening and I am ripening in search of new potential.

It can only germinate naturally out of my experience . . . or not.

It almost bereaves me to think of unrealized potentials dying inside, the small miscarriages of self. I

Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself. There in the rootbed of fertility, World without end, as the legend tells it. Under the words you are my silence.

She gave me another hard look, the kind that can only travel from mother to daughter

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself. There in the rootbed of fertility, World without end, as the legend tells it. Under the words you are my silence.

The best gift she has given me is the constancy of her belief. Whatever I become, she loves me. To her, I am enough.

I could see where I’d mistaken drama and conflict for life, which meant years of living reactively instead of generatively, a life I let be determined by circumstances and the choices of others. We like to think life happens to us, but pretty much everything in your life is there because you wanted it, even if unconsciously. Results, I have learned, don’t lie.

can’t explain this to myself. I only feel in intuitive, indeterminate ways that she will have a part in whatever renaissance might lie in my aging, perhaps opening me to the deeper,

Ann, seeking her true self, her autonomy and voice, her place in the world; and me, looking for the sap of spring, the ability to conjure a new dream of myself and bring it forth. Ann

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously three old owls on a chest of drawers were screwing the daughter of the doctor. But then the mother called them, colorless green ideas slepp furiously.

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas, a thing now of the past!), and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile but more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night, first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer and the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold! Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.

Simone de Beauvoir was of the opinion that if, at menopause, a woman gives her “consent” to growing older, she is changed into a “different being,” one who is more herself, one who is complete.

The two most powerful impulses in my life have been the urge to create and the urge to be – a set of opposites – and they have always clunked into each other. How very like them to do so right now.

Nobody warned me about this part. When I envisioned my trip, I imagined exciting adventures, exotic locales, a jet-set lifestyle. I never thought grief and doubt would climb into my backpack and come with me. I pictured standing at the top of the Sun Gate, looking down at Machu Picchu, without ever thinking about the steps it would take to get there. This is the curse of wanderlust, when the postcard image becomes a brutal reality.

I’ve had intimations of this feeling of loss before, but it was a shadow passing in the peripheries, then gone. After Ann left home, I would wander into her room and catch the scent of dried prom corsages in the closet,

Being a woman in India is an altogether different experience. You can’t always see the power women hold, but it is there, in the firm grasp of the matriarchs who still rule most families. It has not been easy for Sarla to navigate the female path: she has become a master traveler, but one with no pupil. She thought she might develop this relationship with one of her daughters-in-law, but the others, like Somer, didn’t quite fill the role. And when they had babies, they relied on their own mothers, leaving her once again in the company of men. But now, Sarla muses as she glances at the clock, anticipating Krishnan’s arrival, she will finally get her granddaughter.

It seems now I said this with smugness, as if I were somehow immune because I, after all, had a life of my own, creative passions, a spiritual journey, a career separate from my role of mother. Ann was rightly abducted from me

Is there an odyssey the female soul longs to make at the approach of fifty – one that has been blurred and lost within a culture awesomely alienated from soul? If so, what sort of journey would that be? Where would it take me?

I realized it was conceivable that Ann and I both, in our own way, were experiencing a crisis, which according to its definition is: (1) a crucial stage or turning point, and (2) an unstable or precarious situation. At the very least,

These fans were excited to see your mother perform, but more than that it was as if she was taking her audience to church like a fiery, foul-mouthed preacher who offered up profane salvation. There was the new mom who was enjoying her first night out after giving birth a month prior. There are fans who dress up like your mother, imitating the outfits she wore when you were both in her belly There are mothers who bring their daughters. There are those who travel from across the country, and sometimes across the world. They talk about your mother being their spirit animal. Their eyes are lit up, their faces relaxed and smiling, their postures open and welcoming. Watching this magical effect on her fans keeps me manning the merch table to this day.

realize with horrifying certainty that Ann has fallen into the hole. I drop onto my knees and call into the blackness. I scream her name until the sound clots in my throat. I don’t know what to do. Finally I search for a flashlight so I can see down into the opening.

I know that for every mother, there is always the possibility of three in your relationship with your daughter. You, your daughter the way she is, and your daughter the way you want her to be. I learned the hard way ten years ago that that kind of control is an illusion and a barrier.

Years ago, your father and I adopted this piece of chain as a symbol for our marriage. The two outer links represent each of our lives and the center link, our marriage. It reminds us that we have independent lives, dreams, and journeys, but at the same time, we are joined in a center space where our lives are one. We

Uncovering this need has been like finding an empty room in the center of my house, one I didn’t know was there, one I couldn’t pass without feeling its vacuity and wondering how it should be filled. I know I came to Greece in part to try and fill this vacancy in myself. I just didn’t think it would have anything to do with Mary.

contemplate the fertility I hope for in my fifties and beyond—the regeneration of my creativity, the refinement of my spirituality, a new relationship with my body, the rediscovery of my daughter, indeed an inner culmination I cannot fully articulate to myself—I realize it cannot be plotted, orchestrated, controlled, and forced to bloom.

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and startling truth And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility And allow the pure air to cool our palms When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged can walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of abuse When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Nor the Gardens of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled into delicious color By Western sunsets Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the Rising Sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cankerous words Which challenge our very existence Yet out of those same mouths Come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it.

Nadia had invented versions of her mother’s life that did not end with a bullet shattering her brain. Her mother, no longer cradling a tiny, wrinkled body in a hospital bed, an exhausted smile on her face, but seventeen and scared, sitting inside an abortion clinic, waiting for her name to be called. Her mother, no longer her mother, graduating from high school, from college, from graduate school even. Her mother listening to lectures or delivering her own, stationed behind a podium, running a toe up the back of her calf. Her mother traveling the world, posing on the cliffs of Santorini, her arms bent toward the blue sky. Always her mother, although in this version of reality, Nadia did not exist. Where her life ended, her mother’s life began.

Now I understand Isabel's slavish loyalty to George. Now I understand the passionate bond between the king and the queen. Now I even understand the queen's mother Jacquetta dying of heartbreak at the loss of the man she married for love. I learn that to love a man whose interests are mine, whose passion is given freely and openly to me, and whose battle-hardened young lithe body lies beside me every night as his only joy, is to utterly change my life. I was married before; but I was never shaken and touched and puzzled and adored before. I was a wife but I was no lover. With Richard, I become wife and lover, counselor and friend, partner in all things, comrade in arms, fellow traveler. With Richard, I become a woman, not a girl, I become a wife.

In 1970, Alix Kates Shulman, a wife, mother, and writer who had joined the Women's Liberation Movement in New York, wrote a poignant account of how the initial equality and companionship of her marriage had deteriorated once she had children. "[N]ow I was restricted to the company of two demanding preschoolers and to the four walls of an apartment. It seemed unfair that while my husband's life had changed little when the children were born, domestic life had become the only life I had." His job became even more demanding, requiring late nights and travel out of town. Meanwhile it was virtually impossible for her to work at home. "I had no time for myself; the children were always there." Neither she nor her husband was happy with the situation, so they did something radical, which received considerable media coverage: they wrote up a marriage agreement... In it they asserted that "each member of the family has an equal right to his/her own time, work, values and choices... The ability to earn more money is already a privilege which must not be compounded by enabling the larger earner to buy out of his/her duties and put the burden on the one who earns less, or on someone hired from outside." The agreement insisted that domestic jobs be shared fifty-fifty and, get this girls, "If one party works overtime in any domestic job, she/he must be compensated by equal work by the other." The agreement then listed a complete job breakdown... in other worde, the agreement acknowledged the physical and the emotional/mental work involved in parenting and valued both. At the end of the article, Shulman noted how much happier she and her husband were as a result of the agreement. In the two years after its inception, Shulman wrote three children's books, a biography and a novel. But listen, too, to what it meant to her husband, who was now actually seeing his children every day. After the agreement had been in effect for four months, "our daughter said one day to my husband, 'You know, Daddy, I used to love Mommy more than you, but now I love you both the same.

I only vaguely understood at the time the ways that I myself was on my knees, how in need I was of taking back my soul as a woman. The episode propelled me into a collision with the patriarchal underpinning of my church, my faith tradition, my culture, my marriage, and, most illuminating of all, me. It sent me in search of the feminine dimension of God. It began a spiritual cataclysm. My old life dissolved and a new life, a new consciousness, rose up.

In the novel Janus Equation, writer G. Spruill explored one of the harrowing problems with time travel. In this tale a brilliant mathematician whose goal is to discover the secret of time travel meets a strange, beautiful woman, and they become lovers, although he knows nothing about her past. He becomes intrigued about finding out her true identity. Eventually he discovers that she once had plastic surgery to change her features. And that she had a sex change operation. Finally, he discovers that “she” is actually a time traveler from the future, and that “she” is actually himself, but from the future. This means that he made love to himself. And one is left wondering, what would have happened if they had had a child? And if this child went back into the past, to grow up to become the mathematician at the beginning of the story, then is it possible to be your own mother and father and son and daughter?

I’ve been recording my dreams for twelve years. I think of them as snapshots floating up from a mysterious vat, offering metaphoric pictures of what’s going on inside. Sometimes the images suggest where my soul wants to lead me and sometimes where it does not, giving me input and guidance about choices I might make. I am not thinking of the soul in the typical sense, as an immortal essence like the spirit, but rather as the rich, inner life of the psyche, the deepest impulse of which is to create wholeness.

Lale looks at these young women and realizes that there is nothing left to say. They were brought to this camp as girls, and now—not one of them having yet reached the age of twenty-one—they are broken, damaged young women. He knows they will never grow to be the women they were meant to be. Their futures have been derailed, and there will be no getting back on the same track. The visions they once had of themselves, as daughters, sisters, wives and mothers, workers, travelers, and lovers, will forever be tainted by what they’ve witnessed and endured.

But in her time of greatest need, her activist sisters came through for her. They offered her moral support, assured her that she had done nothing wrong, and confirmed the crucial importance of her work. They also connect her with a good pyscho-therapist. One of them even traveled to her city to speak to mother to tell her that her daughter wasn't a criminal and explained that she had in fact made a huge contribution to women's rights and China. "The Sisterhood offered me a safe place where I could be myself and feel secure" she said. "That feminist solidarity rescued me.

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

Once in an art gallery, I came upon a painting of the Madonna holding her toddler in one arm and an open book in her opposite hand. Her eyes are turned toward her child as if she has just been torn from her reading. Heavily lidded, they exude a look of sweet adoring, but they also carry a wistful expression, the sigh of interruption, the veiled craving for her book pages. It was like observing a conflict at the hub of my existence. Baby or book. Children or writing. Motherhood or career. I bought the painting and hung it prominently in the living room. In secret, I sympathized with the self-actualizing side of the Madonna, feeling her perturbation at the child’s demands.

First memory: a man at the back door is saying, I have real bad news, sweat is dripping off his face, Garbert's been shot, noise from my mother, I run to her room behind her, I'm jumping on the canopied bed while she cries, she's pulling out drawers looking for a handkerchief, Now, he's all right, the man say, they think, patting her shoulder, I'm jumping higher, I'm not allowed, they think he saved old man Mayes, the bed slats dislodge and the mattress collapses. My mother lunges for me. Many traveled to Reidsville for the event, but my family did not witness Willis Barnes's electrocution, From kindergarten through high school, Donette, the murderer's daughter, was in my class. We played together at recess. Sometimes she'd spit on me.

When Mrs. Darling came into the kitchen it was with a tentative step and furtive looks. "How is your little pet?" she eventually asked. "What? Oh, he's absolutely adorable," Wendy said, remembering to toss Snowball a tidbit of mutton. For Nana she reserved the bone. "You can... take him with you, you know. To Ireland. He would be a delightful little travel companion." For a moment, just a moment, Wendy looked at her mother- really looked at her, steadily and clearly. "You would never send the boys away." The statement fell hard and final and full of more meaning than anything that had ever been said in the kitchen before. "But they didn't write the... fantasies...." her mother said quietly. Then Mr. Darling came in, loud and blustery, talking up Irish butter and clean country air. Mother and daughter both ignored him.

A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling. It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it--those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked. It was true. The story told of a band of forty women--crazy women, many contended--who had shared among themselves a secret vow; to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them. They acted out of love, some explained. Others said they did it for their country. There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind. Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by U.S. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughter and wives read the letters and listened to the words--and passed them on.

She hadn't gone back in time. The idea was silly. Or had she? Had she knocked on the door of her home to see a younger version of herself answer; had there been a mutual shock of recognition (as the younger Rebecca realized that, yes, her husband's work was due to be a success, that he was not wasting his time chasing rainbows and tilting at windmills); had she slipped her arm into that of her past self (feeling a slight electric tingle as skin touched skin and a taste in her mouth as if she'd touched a nine-volt battery to her tongue) and said, We need to to talk? Had she sat in a coffee shop, conversing with a woman who everyone assumed was related to her in some way—Oh my god you two are so cute, you're mother and daughter but you look like sisters? Had she made some kind of idle remark overheard by a man on his way to spend two weeks' vacation in North Dakota; had that comment convinced that man to settle there permanently instead, and to contact those who had political sympathies similar to his own? Had that unknown man begun the slow process of taking over the state by placing his allies in the local governments if he could? Had that strategy failed, leaving brute force as a regrettable last resort?

How to Apologize Ellen Bass Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling the others into oblivion. If you don't live near a lake, you'll have to travel. Walking is best and shows you mean it, but you could take a train and let yourself be soothed by the rocking on the rails. It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human. When my mother was in the hospital, my daughter and I had to clear out the home she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered and asked, incredulous, How could you have thrown out all my shoes? So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy, but, for the sake of repairing the world, build your own. Thin strips of Western red cedar are perfect, but don't cut a tree. There'll be a demolished barn or downed trunk if you venture further. And someone will have a mill. And someone will loan you tools. The perfume of sawdust and the curls that fall from your plane will sweeten the hours. Each night we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night we could dream back everything lost. So grill the pale flesh. Unharness yourself from your weary stories. Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt. There is much to fear as a creature caught in time, but this is safe. You need no defense. This is just another way to know you are alive. “How to Apologize” originally appeared in The New Yorker (March 15, 2021).

She nods, turning the silver bangle around on her wrist. “She came from some village north of here, a few hours away. She traveled all the way to the city just to…” She trails off, feeling a lump grow in her throat. “…to take you to that orphanage?” Sanjay finishes for her. Asha nods. “And she gave me this.” She slides the bangle back on her wrist. “They gave you everything they had to give,” Sanjay says. He reaches across the table for her hand. “So how do you feel, now that you know?” Asha gazes out the window. “I used to write these letters, when I was a little girl,” she says. “Letters to my mother, telling her what I was learning in school, who my friends were, the books I liked. I must have been about seven when I wrote the first one. I asked my dad to mail it, and I remember he got a really sad look in his eyes and he said, ‘I’m sorry, Asha, I don’t know where she is.’” She turns back to face Sanjay. “Then, as I got older, the letters changed. Instead of telling her about my life, I started asking all these questions. Was her hair curly? Did she like crossword puzzles? Why didn’t she keep me?” Asha shakes her head. “So many questions." “And now, I know,” she continues. “I know where I came from, and I know I was loved. I know I’m a hell of a lot better off now than I would have been otherwise.” She shrugs. “And that’s enough for me. Some answers, I’ll just have to figure out on my own.” She takes a deep breath. “You know, I have her eyes.” Asha smiles, hers glistening now. She rests the back of her head on the booth. “I wish there was some way to let them know I’m okay, without…intruding on their life.

A Lake Charles-based artist, Sally was a progressive Democrat who in 2016 primary favored Bernie Sanders. Sally's very dear friend and worl-traveling flight attendant from Opelousas, Louisiana, Shirley was an enthusiast for the Tea Party and Donald Trump. Both woman had joined sororities at LSU. Each had married, had three children, lived in homes walking distance apart in Lake Charles, and had keys to each other's houses. Each loved the other's children. Shirley knew Sally's parents and even consulted Sally's mother when the two go to "fussing to much." They exchanged birthday and Christmas gifts and jointly scoured the newspaper for notices of upcoming cultural events they had, when they were neighbors in Lake Charles, attended together. One day when I was staying as Shirley's overnight guest in Opelousas, I noticed a watercolor picture hanging on the guestroom wall, which Sally had painted as a gift for Shirley's eleven-year-old daughter, who aspired to become a ballerina. With one pointed toe on a pudgy, pastel cloud, the other lifted high, the ballerina's head was encircled by yellow star-like butterflies. It was a loving picture of a child's dream--one that came true. Both women followed the news on TV--Sally through MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and Shirley via Fox News's Charles Krauthammer, and each talked these different reports over with a like-minded husband. The two women talk by phone two or three times a week, and their grown children keep in touch, partly across the same politcal divide. While this book is not about the personal lives of these two women, it couldn't have been written without them both, and I believe that their friendship models what our country itself needs to forge: the capacity to connect across difference.

Why the Leaves Change Colour The first girl who was ever born with amber skin was Mother Nature’s own child. Her birth was from a seed Mother Nature planted in the darkest, purest, most fertile soil, and soon there was a flower, and the flower opened up to show the most beautiful little girl imaginable. One day when the little girl was playing, the Sky, who was her brother, jealous of how lovely she was and how happy and distracted their mother had been since she was born, stole her and placed her upon a star so far away from the earth, Mother Nature could not get to her. In her grief, Mother Nature took every leaf that existed on Earth and turned them amber. The baby girl raised herself on this star—after all, she was her mother’s child, fortitude became her. She became majestic, and independent, and knew how to cope with anything alone because she had always only known alone. When the girl was finally old enough to explore the universe by itself, she travelled across the stars, finding beauty in thousands of planets, but none where she really felt at home. Until, that is, she came upon a beautiful blue planet with amber leaves. Walking through golden leaves, she remembered who she was, and who her mother was, for this is the magic of the bond children have with their mothers. They will remember them even if they are millions of miles away; why do you think good mothers can say things like ‘I love you all the way around the universe’ and you just know they mean it and know not to question it? When Mother Nature felt in her bones that her child had returned, she took her into her arms and turned all the leaves to green again. But because the leaves of amber gold were how her girl found her again, it happens every single year in commemoration. We call it a season. We named it after Mother Nature’s only daughter. We called it Autumn.

After I returned from that morning, our telephone rang incessantly with requests for interviews and photos. By midafternoon I was exhausted. At four o’clock I was reaching to disconnect the telephone when I answered one last call. Thank heavens I did! I heard, “Mrs. Robertson? This is Ian Hamilton from the Lord Chamberlain’s office.” I held my breath and prayed, “Please let this be the palace.” He continued: “We would like to invite you, your husband, and your son to attend the funeral of the Princess of Wales on Saturday in London.” I was speechless. I could feel my heart thumping. I never thought to ask him how our name had been selected. Later, in London, I learned that the Spencer family had given instructions to review Diana’s personal records, including her Christmas-card list, with the help of her closest aides. “Yes, of course, we absolutely want to attend,” I answered without hesitating. “Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I’ll have to make travel plans on very short notice, so may I call you back to confirm? How late can I reach you?” He replied, “Anytime. We’re working twenty-four hours a day. But I need your reply within an hour.” I jotted down his telephone and fax numbers and set about making travel arrangements. My husband had just walked in the door, so we were able to discuss who would travel and how. Both children’s passports had expired and could not be renewed in less than a day from the suburbs where we live. Caroline, our daughter, was starting at a new school the very next day. Pat felt he needed to stay home with her. “Besides,” he said, “I cried at the wedding. I’d never make it through the funeral.” Though I dreaded the prospect of coping with the heartbreak of the funeral on my own, I felt I had to be there at the end, no matter what. We had been with Diana at the very beginning of the courtship. We had attended her wedding with tremendous joy. We had kept in touch ever since. I had to say good-bye to her in person. I said to Pat, “We were there for the ‘wedding of the century.’ This will be ‘the funeral of the century.’ Yes, I have to go.” Then we just looked at each other. We couldn’t find any words to express the sorrow we both felt.