In the range of things toddlers have to learn and endlessly review--why you can't put bottles with certain labels in your mouth, why you have to sit on the potty, why you can't take whatever you want in the store, why you don't hit your friends--by the time we got to why you can't drop your peas, well, I was dropping a few myself.

Women aren't trying to do too much. Women have too much to do.

One life stamps and influences another, which in turn stamps and influences another, on and on, until the soul of human experience breathes on in generations we'll never meet.

Mother is the first word that occurs to politicians and columnists and popes when they raise the question, 'Why isn't life turning out the way we want it?

How can one explain all the time and thought that goes into raising a child, all the opportunities for mistakes, all the chances to recover and try again? How does one break the news that nothing permanent can be formed in an instant--children are not weaned, potty trained, taught manners, introduced to civilization in one or two tries--as everyone imagined.

However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view,intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.

In an ideal society, mothers and fathers would produce potty- trained, civilized, responsible new citizens while government and corporate leaders would provide a safe, healthy, economically just community.