“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”
“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”
“When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois? We like it here, Jason said. It reminds us of home. Plus, no women around. Leandro Collins, the Bears first-string tight end emerged from the office munching on a bag of chips. There s times when you need a rest from the ladies. Annabelle shot out her arm and smacked him in the side of the head. Don t forget who you re talking to. Leandro had a short fuse, and he d been known to take out a ref here and there when he didn t like a call, but the tight end merely rubbed the side of his head and grimaced. Just like my mama. Mine, too, Tremaine said with happy nod. Annabelle spun on Heath. Their mother! I m thirty-one years old, and I remind them of their mothers. You act like my mother, Sean pointed out, unwisely as it transpired, because he got a swat in the head next.”
“بموت امي.. يسقط آخر قميص صوف اغطي به جسدي.. آخر قميص حنان.. آخر مظلة مطر.. وفي الشتاء القادم.. ستجدونني اتجول في الشوارع عاريا..”
“And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I m betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.”
“And even if you hate her, can t stand her, even if she s ruining your life, there s something about her, some romance, some power. She s absolutely herself. No matter how hard you try, you ll never get to her. And when she dies, the world will be flat, too simple, reasonable, fair.”
“Mom? Mother turned to Grandmother. What? She s going to lunch with her kidnapper! Take a picture for me, Grandma said.”
“My parents raised me that you never ask people about their reproductive plans. “You don’t know their situation,” my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself. Thirty-five turned into forty faster than McDonald’s food turns into cold nonfood.”
“Can I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was the man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised the food that I cooked. He cried honestly when I brought out trinkets I had saved for the right day, the day he gave me my daughter, a tiger girl. How could I not love this man? But it was a love of a ghost. Arms that encircled but did not touch. A bowl full of rice but without my appetite to eat it. No hunger. No fullness. Now Saint is a ghost. He and I can now love equally. He knows the things I have been hiding all these years. Now I must tell my daughter everything. That she is a daughter of a ghost. She has no chi . This is my greatest shame. How can I leave this world without leaving her my spirit? So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. The pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is a way a mother loves her daughter. I hear my daughter speaking to her husband downstairs. They say words that mean nothing. They sit in a room with no life in it. I know a thing before it happens. She will hear the table and vase crashing on the floor. She will come upstairs and into my room. Her eyes will see nothing in the darkness, where I am waiting between the trees.”
“اللهم اعنا على بر أمهاتنا ، و اجعل ما يُثقل الغير طيبا ً، طبيبا ً يُريح القلب ، آمين”
“It has been a week since Ami died and this morning I woke suddenly hours before dawn, indeed the same hour as when my mother died. It was not a dream that woke me, but a thought. And with that thought I could swear I heard Ami s voice. But I am not frightened. I am joyous. Joyous with realization. For I cannot help but think what a lucky person I am. Imagine that in all the eons of time, in all the possible universes of which Dara speaks, of all the stars in the heavens, Ami and I came together for one brief and shining sliver of time. I stop. I think. Supposing in the grand infinity of this universe two particles of life, Ami and me, swirl endlessly like grains of sand in the oceans of the world -- how much of a chance is there for these two particles, these two grains of sand, to collide, to rest briefly together... at the same moment in time? That is what happened with Ami and me... this miracle of chance.”
“Maybe a mother wasn t what she seemed to be on the surface.”
“Ordinarily my mom just sunk deeper into her corner of the couch and ignored it. She had succesfully ignored a quarter of a century of entropy and decay, had sat peacefully crunching popcorn and drinking soda while the house fell down around us. If I had to guess the number of books she read during that time, I would place the number at somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand.”
“Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you’d be okay. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved.”
“My mother was an avid reader...She loved books about romance. Books that took place in faraway places and times. Stories with costumes...”
“There is something about losing your mother that is permanent and inexpressable - a wound that will never quite heal.”
“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn t love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”