mothers

There is nothing as sincere as a mother's kiss.

There's an old joke about a mother watching a column of soldiers pass by. Her son is in the ranks. All those men out of step, she says, except our Fred.

But mostly I remember every morning before school. How she'd say "Hey, honey!" just I was walking out the apartment door. And me stopping and turning around and saying "What?" And her saying "I love you." And me rolling my eyes like I just wanted to hurry up so I didn't miss the bus. I'd start going again and she'd say "Hey, honey!" and I'd pretend I was so annoyed 'cause she was wasting time and I had to go catch the bus. And how secretly it was my favorite part of every day.

Mom could make small things seem miraculous. That was her talent.

The only thing mothers have in common with each other is the fact that they slept with a man while they were ovulating without the appropriate protection

It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

She taught me what's important, and what isn't. And I've never forgotten. And that's what mothers do, I say.

My mother's deathchanged the alchemy of food.Holidays run together nowlike ungrooved rivers. I forgetwhat they are for. I buy bakery goods.They look deadunder the blue lights.I don't do anything the way she taught mebut I get fat.I don't look like her and I don't soundlike her, but I stand like her.

Mothers are generally starvers or feeders

I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me.

He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.

America__here we hate our fathers, love our mothers, andeveryone is hung up on tryingto be a man

Mothers took their mothering so seriously now. Their frantic little faces...Ponytails swinging. Eyes fixed on the mobile phones held in the palms of their hands like compasses.

Mothers are multi-taskers.

Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers.

Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there__ a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic.

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.