Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays
Who would I be today if I was raised by married parents, if our little family wasn’t weighed down by a secret? I envied Madame Lapierre and her sons, and their clean conscience. And yet, was it terrible to admit that I’d also loved the travails of our life, the inconsistency of Father’s affection, the hardness of Anouk’s hands when they pulled on m
... See moreSanaë Lemoine • The Margot Affair: A Novel
There is no thinking, no rationale, and certainly no conversation when Emma cries. My body responds to her in a way that is purely primal, that I have no willful control over. She cries: my blood pressure climbs. My limbs become tense, my neck locks into a rigid posture. My uterus contracts, the stitches in my incision do their best to give with th
... See moreJeanine Cummins • The Crooked Branch
In a way, though, their absence felt appropriate, in keeping with my father’s otherworldly nature. It made a kind of poetic sense that a man so incapable of acting like a parent would somehow lack any of his own.
Fei-Fei Li • The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI
Her mother never let her be alone with her father. So in a way she has no idea whether her father might have been the sort of man to ease her troubles.