Tillie Olsen

I have never read anything by her til now, I think. And to say that this story spoke to me is understating it. I have reread it every day for a week, at least twice a day. So many thoughts running through my head. "All human life on the planet is born of woman. The only unifying, incontrovertible experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period we spent unfolding inside a woman's body. Because young humans remain dependent upon nurture for a much longer period than other mammals, and because of the division of labor long established in human groups, where women not only bear and suckle but are assigned almost total responsibility for children, most of us first know both love and disappointment, power and tenderness, in the person of a woman" (Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born). Even as I'm typing this, I'm inturrupted every two minutes by my 20 month old daughter who wants to play. What mother doesn't question how the choices she makes today will affect her children in the future? I didn't breastfeed because of health reasons; is that why Layla has had pneumonia twice this season? When I started back to school last year, I decided not to do my school work while she was awake-I saved it only for nap time and night time. Waking hours I devoted wholey to Layla. That meant that night time was clean up the house and do homework time, not bond with husband time. I realized eventually that if I kept this up, my marriage would suffer. I then had to decide: was it worse for Layla to grow up perhaps in a broken home, or was it worse to set her down in front of Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse every day while I did my school work. Well, my marriage won. Will she resent me later in life for chosing knowledge over her, or will she recongize what I have done as an example for her own life? I hope for the later. One more feeling about this story? Why is it so ingrained in us to blame how our daughters turn out on the mothers? Why does this woman never say in this whole thing "if only her father hadn't left us to begin with...". Why blame the woman and not examine the man's role in this child's slow blooming? And again, why does she lament her role in her daughter's slow blooming, but not feel any sort of responsibility for her daughter's recent triumphs? these are my thoughts-but now I've got to go, because Layla has taken to pushing the computer keys to get my attention.