My shadow looming over the photo of my mother, taken before The Great Depression that so shaped the course of her life, began. "It is difficult for a woman to admit that she gets along with her own mother--somehow it seems a form of betrayal, at least, it used to among other women in my generation. To join in the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our own mother's indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of her pain, her tendency to drink or teetotal, her warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusions or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that she sweat, labored, bore her daughters howling or under total anaesthesia or both. No. She must be responsible for our pyschic weaknesses the rest of her life. It is all right to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame." Louise Erdrich, 'The Painted Drum'

We have discovered that toddler heads are just as kissable as baby heads. More updates as events warrant.