Happy Mother's Day

Whenever I feel myself inferior to everything about me, threatened by my own mediocrity, frightened by the discovery that a muscle is losing its strength, a desire its power, or a pin the keen edge of its bite, I can still hold up my head and say to myself ... Let me not forget that I am the daughter of a woman who bent her head, trembling, over a cactus, her wrinkled face full of ectasy over the promise of a flower, a woman who herself never ceased to flower, untiringly, during three quarters of a century.

from Break of Day by Collette; as quoted in The Quotable Woman: The First 5000 Years; Checkmark Books; New York; 2001

Portrait of a mother and daughter by Emile Munier; Courtesy ARC