Цитаты из книг — Кейт Бэр

What Mothers Say I am tired. I am sleeping. I am heading up to bed. Is it Tuesday? What’s to- morrow? When’s the last I slept alone? I am thinking. I am talking. Do you see I’m on the phone? Bring the dishes, find your blanket, put that book back on the shelf. It is bedtime. It is rest time. You need to go and brush…

What Children Say I can’t reach my cup, my water bottle, the snack up on the shelf. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I would never do it in a million years. You need to help me. Help me faster. Do it the way I asked you to. I don’t like pizza or watermelon. I don’t like anything I liked before. I do not want it. I do not…

Transfiguration I dreamt myself into a mother, but when I became her, I had to dream her back into a woman back into a woman back into a woman again.

Etymology of the Word Wife from the Indo-European root, ghwibh, which means pudenda or shame shame from the Old English, scamu, which means modesty or private part private from the Latin word privatus, which means personal or peculiar peculiar from the mid-fifteenth-century meaning “belonging exclusively to one person” or…

Marriage as a Death In the beginning, a spectacle. A ceremony bearing witness. Greeters down the aisles, flowers on their coats. Only later does it hang off our shoulders with its gray dust. Forever sitting on our doorstep while others pay tribute. How long has it been? Ten years. Fifteen years. Twenty-some and counting.…

Roger says his wife is too busy to work, what with the boys and their schedules and large appetites. Can you believe how much they eat in one sitting? he laughs, never having made a meal big enough to fill more than his plate.

When I took you as a husband I did not know the deaths our love would suffer. I did not know the graves of loneliness.

Like a Wife The week before my wedding, my friend’s dad said: just don’t get fat, like other wives do. And so I brined him in a deep salt bath, added thyme and celery. Devoured him whole, in one big bite, so he could see just how hungry a woman can be.

Things My Girlfriends Teach Me When in doubt, try it on. Keep it simple. Don’t waste time worrying if they will see you from behind. No one on this entire earth cares more about your life than you. Eat a breakfast. Find a God. Make a casserole to freeze. If you’re walking on a deserted road, send me your location.…

To Take Back a Life First, you must learn desire. Hold its fruit in your hands. Unmarry it from the hunger to be held, to be wanted, to be called from the streets like the family dog. You are not a good girl. You are not somebody’s otherness. This is not a dress rehearsal before a better kind of life. Pick up your heavy…

It’s Like This Mary Ruefle used the word snail in two poems so that I could use the word grief in all of mine. The problem is we all want to see a little suffering: dead mothers, bad fathers, the redbird crushed beneath the wheel. All the days we’ve lived through, we just want to say, at least it wasn’t me.

Dearly Beloved I write eulogies for my friends, brief and beautiful. I will write one for you too— driving down the highway or in the shower or given the chance for a long city walk. I will begin, “She was one of the good ones,” then pause for the tremors of grief. I got engaged when I was eighteen to a boy I would never…

My Friend Bethany Rages at the News A Beautiful Celebrity Woman is asked: what is your beauty secret? She answers: hot lemon water every morning. She does not answer: time. She does not say the names of every woman who scrubs her bathroom tile and carries children to and from the car. A child is shot at a convenience…

I did meet a John once who’d call me on Sundays and tell me all the ways women had disappointed him: thin hair, small breasts, dirt under the finger- nails. Which one am I? I asked one night awake on the phone. He laughed as if I did not know. As if I could not see my own face.

Did you know when you bait a deer it’s called a violation, but when you poison a girl it’s called a date.

You think I’m not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn. —Margaret Atwood, “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing”