Kelly Corrigan

“I've had cancer twice and if I had to pick one fate for you, cancer or fertility problems-I'd pick cancer.”

“I don't know what to saw about a man who calls a perfectly adorable three-year old a fucker, but "my hero" comes to mind.”

“He loved me the way only a nineteen-year old can- suddenly and deliriously.”

“Or maybe, knowing that intercourse involved certain unsavory sights, smells, and sounds, God deliberately left the ingredients for alcohol lying around where man would undoubtedly find them.”

“When you are in pain, and you see someone else in pain, there is really nothing as satisfying as giving them comfort in the night.”

“How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?”

“Those early characterizations (Our parents give us) can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime”

“We'll bury our mothers and fathers - shuttling our children off for sleepovers, jumping on red-eyes, telling eachother stories that hurt to hear, about gasping, agonal breaths, hospice nurses, scars and bruises and scabs, and how skin papers shortly after a person passes. We will nod in agreement that it is as much an honor to witness a person leave this world as it is to watch a person come into it.”

“I envy my dad and his faith. I envy all people who have someone to beseech, who know where they're going, who sleep under the fluffy white comforter of belief.”

“I shift my position on the sofa, so my head is on a big, lumpy pillow in Greenie's lap and Georgia is leanign back against my middle and Claire is just about asleep on the floor. Allison and I catch eyes, and she tilts her head and smiles, and when I smile back, we both well up with tears, I think beause we both recognize that whatever else may be unfolding, this is happiness.”

“It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.”

“Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter.”

“My default answer to everything is no. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word no forms in my mind, sometimes accompanies by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? No. Can I wear your necklace? No. When is dinner? No. What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I want to say yes. Yes, you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes, you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes, you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make your tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood racoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could come back to life as your uncle, so I could give you more. But, when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against those wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end.”

“This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.”

“He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime.”

“That to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages--becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors. ”

“We're never ready for the things that happen. When the big stuff happens, we're always looking in the other direction.”

“If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can't find a towel or a sponge or your "inside" voice.”

“Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything.”