“Mom, mom, mom, mom! A yowl rose from my gut, my bowels, my womb, raw as a birth cry but with no hope in it, a maddening howl, a roar, the water a wailing wall shattering around me. Unsyllabled, thoughtless, the cry rose from the oldest cells in my body. I hadn't known grief could be so primal, so crude. The violence shook me. When it stopped, I fell to my knees in the shower, and the water called to the water in me; I wanted to melt, to run down the drain and under the city to the creek and then to the river thirty miles away. Mom, mom, mom, mom!”

“Mom. Mom, I... All I ever wanted was for you to smile at me. If you praised me just a little bit or touched my cheek...you'd make me so happy, I would cry.”

“Claire: Seriously? My mom? Let you in my room? In the middle of the night?Michael: Moms like me.”

“My grandma is very old, and she doesn't remember things a lot, but she bakes the most delicious cookies. When I was very little, we had my mom's mom, who always had candy, and my dad's mom,who always had cookies. My mom told me that when I was little, I called them "Candy Grandma" and "Cookies Grandma." I also called pizza crust "pizza bones." I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It’s not so easy, moving forward.”

“Ooh that’s him!” my mom cried jumping up and down.“Why don’t you date him, mom? You seem to really like him,” I smiled.She stopped jumping. “Oh, I couldn’t. He’s much too young for me,” she laughed wickedly and went to get the door.“Haven’t you ever heard of cougars!” I yelled after her. Sloane and her mom Tammi”