One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.

Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.

Our mythology tells us so much about fathers and sons. ... What do we know about mothers and daughters? ... Our power is so oblique, so hidden, so ethereal a matter, that we rarely struggle with our daughters over actual kingdoms or corporate shares. On the other hand, our attractiveness dries as theirs blooms, our journey shortens just as theirs begins. We too must be afraid and awed and amazed that we cannot live forever and that our replacements are eager for their turn, indifferent to our wishes, ready to leave us behind.

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.

We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.