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Fast Turtles

We have to get out of here fast. It’s now or never, especially since we could run into Dag getting off work. It’s dangerous, but on the way out of town I stop by his cabin to drop off a goodbye letter.

Trudy Deere Goes To Heaven

I’ve been in the hospital four days when they put another woman in the room with me — an old farm wife from Beardstown, by the name of Trudy Deere. Trudy Deere has been in a car accident. She’s recuperating.

From Little Acorns: A Radical New Psychology

An Interview With James Hillman

I think there is a paradigm shift going on in the culture. The old psychology just doesn’t work anymore. Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn’t do anything — or that it doesn’t do enough.

Where Silence Starts

Imagining motherhood is like imagining old age: there are no reliable forecasts. I assumed I would know more. While pregnant, I supposed that mothers’ intuition was a hard, certain thing, a perpetually replenished reservoir of basic instinct.

The Parental Fallacy

The acorn theory suggests a primitive solution. It says: Your daimon selected both the egg and the sperm, as it selected their carriers, called “parents.” Their union results from your necessity — and not the other way around.

Foxglove Canyon

It rained last night, and this morning there’s a heavy mist hanging low over the Blue Ridge Mountains, like a Sunday dress over a grandmother’s sagging breasts. This is the last place I’ll work, the end of the trail, my final stop: Shady Rest Nursing Home.

Manna

On Sunday morning at a quarter to six, Lilli calls for me. Her cry hits me in my sleep like a hurled knife. Lightning flashes through my brain; my stomach cramps up; my heart flutters. With eyes closed, I wait for her next cry.

Mother To Child

Laughing to confound me. / Laughing when I cut my finger, / bang my head. / Laughing when I’m angry. / You are too much like me. / You are too close.

Starting Over

The Ganges river, Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, Key West

Starting Kevin

The idea of a baby sucking on her breast, the way her boyfriend back in Durant had liked to do, disgusted Vanessa, but she said she would try it. Kevin didn’t seem interested — just mouthed at her soft flesh and fell asleep — although he latched on quickly to the firm bottle nipple the maternity-ward nurses offered.