Reflection of the Bond Between a Mother and Daughter in Anna Quindlen’s Mothers

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Anna Quindlen’s short story Mothers reflects on the very powerful bond between a mother and a daughter. A bond that she lost at the age of nineteen, when her mother died from ovarian cancer. She focuses her attention on mothers and daughters sharing a stage of life together that she will never know, seeing each other through the eyes of womanhood. Quindlen’s story seems very cathartic, a way of working out the immense hole left in her life, what was, what might have been and what is. As she navigates her way through a labyrinth of observations and questions, I am carried back in time to an event in my life and forced to inspect it all over again. In the very first paragraph Quindlen describes the relationship I have with my mother. It feels like she might have been watching my mom and me. “two women are sitting at a corner table in the restaurant, their shopping bags wedged between their chairs and the wall:” (Quindlen 31) A ritual my mother and I have always had: go shopping, get lunch, grab a coffee, enjoy each others company. When I became an adult this ritual became a huge part of my life. I needed my moms experience to guide me through all the minefields of becoming the woman I am now. When I found out I was pregnant at twenty she was the first person I wanted to talk to. I was so upset, my life felt over. She reassured me that everything was going to work out and one day this would seem like a blessing. When my son got sick and I was scared and tired and didn't know what to do, I could call her at 3:00am and she would come over to watch him for a while. If my husband and I were having problems I could ask her how dad and she got through it. But more than those things, she became my best friend, she needed me t... ... middle of paper ... ... amazing ability to be able to plan a future and when that future is altered we want to hold on to it. I have seen it tear people down and make people stronger. I have seen it make people bitter and I chose for it to make me grateful. We construct fantasy and Quindlen ask if “the fantasy has within it a nugget of fact” (Quindlen 32) and the torture seems to be never knowing. Anna Quindlen let me and all of her readers into a very personal experience in her life and through it I was vividly reminded of a time in my own life. These experiences change people, it changed Quindlen and it changed me. I try and stay present with the people I have right now. I know what I have and I know that some people never get to have it. When you lose people in your life you lose the ability to be naive and complacent, you lose the ability to take relationships for granted.

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