May 5, 2012
Here are a few quotes from Bed and Board, Chapter 4. To be a Mother is to be the sacrament - the effective symbol - of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home...in the extended sense that she remains our center of gravity through the years. She is the very diagram of belonging, the where in whose vicinity we are fed and watered, and have our wounds bound up and our noses wiped. What can be said of mothers is that while they do fulfill their functions, they are increasingly tempted to do so for the wrong reason. They are led, subtly but surely, to look on the mothering they do as mere necessity - even a penance - and live as if they were reserving their real enthusiasm for something else, usually unspecified. They list themselves apologetically as "only a mother"; and they accumulate endless labor-saving devices, in order to conserve themselvs for some other and better role than motherhood. A mother's role then is precisely to be there for them. N...