cling to the Milan women’s understanding of these literary heroines as mothers. I wish I had learned to read them in this way years ago—with the same complicated, ambivalent, essential freedom that a daughter feels when she looks at her mother, understanding her as a figure that she simultaneously resists and depends on; a figure that she uses, cru

Parenting is hard; it’s relentless. It doesn’t give you any space. And I know that he has a point. We can’t fit into our house as it is. We can’t afford it. He’s right. But none of those arguments take away these feelings that I need to mother a baby again.’