motherhood Quotes

“The angel shook her head slowly and said. ‘Six pairs of hands.... no way.’ ‘It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,’ God remarked, ‘it’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.’ ”

“And God said, ‘Have you read the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands.’ ”

″ One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, ‘What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. ‘I understand and I love you’ without so much as uttering a word.”

″‘No, I declare, the largest egg lies there still. I wonder how long this is to last, I am quite tired of it;’ and she seated herself again on the nest.”

“In her month and a half of turbulent motherhood, Bebe did not once seek help from a psychologist or a doctor... she had no idea where to turn... She did not know how to find the social workers who might have helped her... she did not know how to file for welfare.”

“God alone knows how much I have suffered; and He, I trust, will forgive me. If I am permitted to have my children, I intend to be a good mother, and to live in such a manner that people cannot treat me with contempt.”

“What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”

“Inside her, there was a speck of Brian, a spark of him turning over and over within her... something she was going to have anyway, so why not now?”

A terrible, painful sadness clutched at Ellen. More than ever before, she felt that her life—the best part of it, at least, the part that was fresh and fun—was behind her. Recognizing the sensation made her feel guilty, for she read it as proof that she was an unsatisfactory mother, an unsatisfied wife. She hated her life, and hated herself for hating it. She thought of a line from a song Billy played on the stereo: “I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.”

“The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost; for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went. My second joy And first-fruits of my body, from his presence I am barr’d, like one infectious.”

“The process of shaping the child, shapes also the mother herself. Reverence for her sacred burden calls her to all that is pure and good, that she may teach primarily by her own humble, daily example.”

“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”

“Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don’t misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence.”

“Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu. ‘D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.’ ”

″... having children-creating a family, so to speak- had taken on entirely new significance for her in the wake of her family’s losses.”

“And you told me you wanted children. That more than anything, you wanted to be a mother.”

“My mother used to hope that I would rise up from my humble roots. Become someone sucessful, or even famous. I’m famous all right, but I don’t think it’s what she had in mind.”

“I longed for the birth, for the sensation of the baby’s head pressing down through me, for that unmistakable, pure, painful sensation of bringing a child into the world, albeit with pain, with tears. I wanted those tears, I wanted that pain. I did not want the pain of emptiness, the tears of a barren, scarred womb.”

“Kill a plant, buy a puppy. Well, of course it made perfect sense.”

“Excuse me. I am a sacred vessel, alright? All you’ve got in your stomach is Taco Bell.”

“Life is strange now. Before even when she lay in bed looking frail and weak she still managed to make me feel safe. Mothers do that don’t they? Their very presence can help. And even if I ended up mothering her in the final days, she still was taking care of me. I miss her.”

“Would you ask a mother to sell one of her children?” “Whyever not? They can always make more. Mothers sell their children every day.” “Not the Mother of Dragons.” “Not even for twenty ships?” “Not for a hundred.”

″ Be present in all things and thankful for all things.”

″ Do the best you can, until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

″ I do my best because I am counting on you counting on me.”

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn’t have written even one poem if she’d had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for.”

“My baby will be here! He will want to eat.”

“Now run along, and don’t get into mischief.”

Each story speaks wholeness and healing and wonder to the soul. I needed several tissues in each story to wipe away the tears: whether it was over Griffin’s misunderstanding that his baby sister had gone away because he didn’t love her enough or Perry’s mute solitude as he strives to understand why his mother would leave him in a suitcase stolen from a thrift shop and go to heaven without him.

“My mother used to threaten to tear me into eight piece if I knocked over the water bucket, or pretended not to hear her calling me to come home as the dusk thickened and the cicadas’s shrilling increased. I would hear her voice, brought and fierce, echoing through the lonely valley. “Where is that wretched boy? I will tear him apart when he gets back.”

She was strong from endless hard work, and not old: She’d given birth to me before she was seventeen, and when she held me I could see we had the same skin, although in other ways we were not much alike she having broad, placid features, while mine, I’d been told (for we had no mirrors in the remote mountain village of Mino), were finer, like a hawk’s.

“The mother was grateful. She took the oil from Anancy. She thanked him. She said ‘You took one of my children. Too many. Too many to feed. Too many to clothe. But first, promise promise you’ll look after him.”

“Anancy walked, carrying the half bottle of palm oil. He came to a woman with ten children around her in their open yard. She was oiling her children bodies with her spittle.”