A Bookworm In Bed With

What In Me Is Pure Conviction Is Simple Prejudice In You.

The Successful Truck Gardener Can Never Go Out To Dinner In The Summer Or Spend A Week End Away, Because His Conscience Tells Him He Has To Be At Home Eating Up His Corn Or Packaging His Beans For The Freezer.

Sisters Are Always Drying Their Hair. Locked Into Rooms, Alone, They Pose At The Mirror, Shoulders Bare, Trying This Way And That Their Hair, Or Fly Importunate Down The Stair To Answer The Telephone.

Scratch Any Father, You Find / Someone Chock-full Of Qualms And Romantic Terrors, / Believing Change Is A Threat.

God Knows That A Mother Needs Fortitude And Courage And Tolerance And Flexibility And Patience And Firmness And Nearly Every Other Brave Aspect Of The Human Soul. But Because I Happen To Be A Parent Of Almost Fiercely Maternal Nature, I Praise Casualness. It Seems To Me The Rarest Of Virtues. It Is Useful Enough When Children Are Small. It Is Useful To The Point Of Necessity When They Are Adolescents.