“They count that as your birthday -- the day your mother gets up.""Not the day you were born?"Not the day you came out. They count the mother getting better as all part of the birth.”

“Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.”

“I felt emptied-out and singing with echoes, unrecognizable to myself: that particular feeling like your own house on the day you move out.”

“Remember how we use to pray to get invited to birthday parties? And they only asked us because we were so grateful we'd do anything, stay late and help the mothers wash the cake pans. I'm still that girl, flattered to death if somebody wants me around.”

“You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.”

“Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seed: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time. . . Thanksgiving is Creation's birthday party. Praise harvest, a pause and sigh on the breath of immortality.”

“Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it. ”