Beginning
Here's a secret you should know about mothers. We spy. Yes, on our kids. It starts at birth. In those first months we spend twenty-three hours a day trying to get you to sleep, grateful you aren't yet verbal because at some point we run out of lyrics to the lullabies and start singing "Hush little baby, don't be contrary,/ Mama's gonna have a coro-nary." And then you finally doze off, and what do you think we do? Go read a book? No, we stand over your cradle and stare, thinking, God, those little fingernails. Those eyelashes. Where did this perfect creature come from?
Small Wonder ~ by Barbara Kingsolver, 2002, literary essays, xvi + 269 pages
I have already shared the first lines of the first essay in this book a few months ago, HERE. But I never got around to actually reading the whole book. So this time, I opened the book in the middle to an essay entitled "Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen" and used that one. I'll read it first and then the rest of the book, which has twenty-two essays about nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while taking a look at wars, violence, and poverty in our world.
Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts
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