Monday, May 16, 2011

Awesome Mundane Importance

I've been struggling to define why I'm in the slog. There's not one event to point to, no difficulties or overwhelming problems. Maybe a little lack of sleep but nothing insurmountable. But I'm mucking along and not feeling like I'm making much progress.

And then I came across this quote (thanks Linda - you resonated with it first and passed it along at just the right time.) I think this might sum it up nicely.

I thought, how can it be that two strangers are exchanging such intimate things? Well, most women are full to the brim, that’s all. That’s what I think. I think we are most of us ready to explode, especially when our children are small and we are so weary with the demands for love and attention and the kind of service that makes you feel you should be wearing a uniform with “Mommy” embroidered over the left breast, over the heart. I (used to sit) half watching Ruthie and half dreaming—trying, I think, to recall my former self. If a stranger had come up to me and said, “Do you want to talk about it? I have time to listen,” I think I might have burst into tears at the relief of it. It wasn’t that I was really unhappy. It was the constancy of my load and the awesome importance of it; and it was my isolation.
—Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

1 comment:

  1. About made me cry reading that quote because it is so true for me too...and probably every other young mother out there! I was talking with David the other day about how I used to have the summer's off since I was a teacher and I was trying to remember what I would have done during all those days off!? It's hard to remember the "former self" in the midst of the exhaustion and realities of the "present self".

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