Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays

Rage is a privilege of the powerful, of white men in America. It is not for the rest of us, who must guard it or eat it whole. The woman must sit humbly as she testifies in a soft, calm, ladylike voice, eager to “help” her interrogators.

When we spoke on the telephone almost every day, I would ask her what she was doing. Often she would answer, “I’m looking at the babies.” Her oldest baby was then sixty-four.

self-sacrificing, patient queen of the domestic realm, who assumed the moral education of her children, was born in the eighteenth century. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau deserves considerable credit for her creation.

We acquire the feelings of others, especially beloved others, and imagine that what we have never seen or touched belongs to us, too, by imaginative connection.

hunting-gathering people, but they engaged in elaborate rituals and embalming practices. This came as a great surprise to anthropologists because they did not expect such sophistication from hunter-gatherers. Their afterlife was given far more attention than their before-life.

secrets traveled in the family, secrets heavy with emotion. I felt they were like stones stored in hidden pockets in a big man’s overcoat, and wearing that coat meant being weighed down by shame.

She told me that when she gave birth at forty to my youngest sister, Ingrid, she knew it was probably the last time, and she felt a pang of loss. My mother’s labors were short and intense—all of them under three hours.

I expect every person has been deceived, lied to, and betrayed. We misread others and suffer for it.

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