“There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding. ”

“She is a mother.When you look at her, you see the purest love of all. That love gives her away. That kind of love only mothers radiate.”

“Always, always, always love your mother.No one else will ever love you like she does.”

“Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can shatter souls. Choose carefully the words you say to others. Choose wisely the words you say to yourself. Words have a way of becoming truths we believe about ourselves. And what we believe, we become.”

“The kids just got back from camp. After four days, it’s great to have them home. I find myself staring at my wife and how she interacts with them. Spoils them. As if she’s making up lost time. I don’t know how else to say it, but that shit is hot.”

“There are times when a time from my childhood comes to me, swirls around me, teases me as I try to catch the memory in my hands, as I try to catch the scents, the sounds, the warmth of the sun on my young face. In bare feet, I reach for it, the memory that is. I reach for summer nights, playing chase, reach across a thousand miles to the comfort of my father’s voice, to the rush of heat when my mother opens the oven to check on the baking, reach toward the rush of laughter, toward home, toward the glory days of my youth. The only way to catch an elusive memory is to open my heart and swallow it whole. When I die, I’ll be stuffed full of memories, too many to fit into a casket.”

“I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room”

“I sit quietly and think about my mom. It’s funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.”

“one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.”

“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”

“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.”

“Ukimheshimu baba au mama yako katika mambo mema au mabaya umemheshimu Mungu katika mambo mema.”

“To know myself as woman in the image of God to know God as Mother and to know my own mother as a window into God: these three are inseparable.If one is implausible to the heart the other two are as well.”

“I love God, Jesus Christ, my three children, mother, father, brother, sisters, family in general, my pets, my students, and true friends.”

“The sound of thunder awake me, and when I got up, my feet sank into muddy water up to my ankles. Mother took Buster and Helen to high ground to pray, but I stayed behind with Apache and Lupe. We barricaded the door with the rug and started bailing water out the window. Mother came back and begged us to go pray with her on the hilltop. “To heck with praying!” I shouted. “Bail, dammit, bail!”Mom look mortified. I could tell she thought I’d probably doomed us all with my blasphemy, and I was a little shocked at it myself, but with the water rising so fast, the situation was dire. We had lit the kerosene lamp, and we could see the walls of the dugout were beginning to sag inward. If Mom had pitched in and helped, there was a chance we might have been able to save the dugout – not a good chance, but a fighting chance. Apache and Lupe and I couldn’t do it on our own, though, and when the ceiling started to cave, we grabbed Mom’s walnut headboard and pulled it through the door just as the dugout collapsed in on itself, burying everything.Afterward, I was pretty aggravated with Mom. She kept saying that the flood was God’s will and we had to submit to it. But I didn’t see things that way. Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail – the gumption to try to save ourselves – isn’t that what he wanted us to do?”