Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays

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

have no memory of my grandparents in conversation or of them touching each other.

Then she turned to her temporary wards, nodded at them, and said, “Okay, now, go wild.” They took the cue. They howled, hooted, rolled in the driveway dirt, threw whatever was handy, ran in and out of the house, slammed doors, kicked trees and fences, and spat at each other in an orgy of freedom as my grandmother watched them, seated calmly on the

No human culture discards its dead without ceremony. To leave the dead without rites is ignominy. It seems that even the Neanderthals buried their dead.

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?

The ancient belief, which persisted for centuries, that mother’s milk was transformed blood reinforced the image. As a mother nurtured her young, Christ nurtured the flock with his blood during the Eucharist.

In his memoir, my father remembers that when he met his father, the man was wearing his wedding ring and that it made him happy. Nowhere else in the memoir is there any description of bitterness and alienation between his parents. There is no other mention of wedding rings on or off, or the pain of a naked finger as opposed to one wearing the sign

It is only as an adult that I have been able to meditate on the problem of omission, on what is missing rather than what is there, and to begin to understand that the unsaid may speak as loudly as the said.

I have been remembering my mother’s walk. It was a determined walk, but with a light step. I can still hear and feel its decisive, confident rhythm. She loved to walk—in the Minnesota woods, the Norwegian mountains, on beaches everywhere—and she walked hard and long every day until a spate of illnesses slowed her down at the age of ninety. She walk