Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays

In biology, however, there is a concept called homeostasis, an old idea with a newish name. It identifies the dynamic adjustments the living body makes to internal and external realities that keep it going as itself. It changes so it can remain the same.

We are made in and through others. Our decisions are founded on a complex mingling of feelings and circumstance, both of which are influenced by the power or lack of it we have in society and the cultural ideas to which we have access—that include dos and don’ts and images of good and bad mothers, which may serve as justifications after the fact. W

My loss also includes a sense of bewilderment that I have never felt before after someone I love has died. It has been hard to understand how it is possible that my mother is nowhere. How can she be nowhere?

My mother was not at all worried about the fate of the boys in my life when I was fifteen. She was worried about me, and her ethics included my caring for me. She was worried young men who had the power advantage would manipulate her child. She was worried about my own weakness and desire to please. My mother did not think I would regret wholeheart

guilt is a social emotion born of our attachments to others, and that nasty form of self-punishment becomes active only when a person is able to see himself as others see him. It is born of reflective self-consciousness.

“In the same river we both step and do not step, we are and are not.” This is far more mysterious. The river continues to flow, to move, and the water in it is forever changing although it remains the same river. I will not attempt to interpret the “we are and are not.”

I remember her tired, drawn face. I remember her voice cracking when she scolded us. She could be furious. I have often wondered what I would have done with four children. I had one. She put us all to bed right after dinner—six thirty. I remember lying awake and making up stories because I couldn’t sleep. As an adult, I once asked her why our bedti

Planning, measuring, fixing, and cleaning are methods of control, getting the world in habitable shape, but it’s good to have a clear idea of what we are doing and why we may attach moral qualities to these acts.

My mother was proud, vain, and competitive. Despite evidence to the contrary, she claimed she never had fevers, detected spots on her clothing no one else could see, and kicked higher and harder than anyone else in her exercise classes. She spent long hours writing deep papers for a book club to which she belonged. She wanted those papers to shine,