I have a good friend who blogs and is an avid reader and a mother of four. She reads a lot of memoirs which I don't usually read. On the side of her blog is a list of books she has read, is reading and is going to read. All that to say, she has just finished a memoir called The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan and commented about it on her blog. She posted one of her favorite paragraphs from the book. And it was so true to my life I asked her if I could cut and paste the paragraph on my blog. So here it is! It so speaks to my life right now!
"The way I see it, if you have four kids, you really don't have to do anything else, ever. Three kids is a handful, but one that many people manage to hold. If you are a mother of four, you definitely don't have a career or volunteer for the school fund-raiser or even bring an appetizer to the dinner party. In fact, people give you lots of credit for wearing both earrings and knowing how to spell chaos and antidepressant. Four kids gives you a pass for every forgotten birthday, overlooked appointment and missing form. Plus, you can be late for everything the rest of your life and never return phone calls. Who's gonna blame you?"
I cannot WAIT to read the book . . .
2 comments:
The interesting thing to me, about this quote, was that Kelly doesn't have four children. She had planned for a large family, she SO wanted four children, but after she had two girls, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Part of her follow-up treatment was hormone therapy, which basically meant no more babies.
And, as another aside, the title comes from the place where she lived her life: she was a daddy's girl and always felt mostly like a daughter, even when she was a mother. She had to grow up fast when she was diagnosed with cancer and when her dad got cancer at the same time.
It was a very good book.
I actually Googled the book and read bunches of comments on it. It sounds very interesting and I am going to read it next!! Feel free to share reviews of other books you read ;) I was trying to figure out how the four kids thing came in.
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