I'm Waiting For The Day When My

I Was Aware, In Those Early Days Of Motherhood, That My Behaviour Was Strange To The People Who Knew Me Well. It Was As Though I Had Been Brainwashed, Taken Over By A Cult Religion. And Yet This Cult, Motherhood, Was Not A Place Where I Could Actually Live. Like Any Cult, It Demanded A Complete Surrender Of Identity To Belong To It.

Parenthood, Like Death, Is An Event For Which It Is Nearly Impossible To Be Prepared. It Brings You Into A New Relationship With The Fact Of Your Own Existence, A Relationship In Which One May Be Rendered Helpless.

The Distinctive Feature Of My Family Was Intolerance Of Sensitivity And Emotion - Everything's Great, It All Has To Be Great All The Time And Why Do You Have To Spoil It? Whereas Probably The Most Fundamental And Important Thing To Me Has Been Defending My Right To Tell The Truth About How I Feel.

You Could Time A Suburban Story By Your Watch: It Lasts As Long As It Takes A Small Furry Animal That's Lonely To Find Friends, Or A Small Furry Animal That's Lost To Find Its Parents; It Lasts As Long As A Quick Avowal Of Love; It Lasts Precisely As Long As The Average Parent Is Disposed On A Tuesday Night To Spend Reading Aloud To Children.

There Is A Slovenly Disrespect For Truth And Reality That Has Infected And Cross-infected The Arts; The Values Of Entertainment Are Relentlessly In The Ascendant, To The Extent That It Becomes Virtually Impossible To Write A Naturalistic Fictional Sentence Without Feeling That The Fabric Of That Sentence Is Already Compromised.