That About Covers It

I wanted to set these two Mother's Day posts next to each other.

"Where are your kids?"
My inquisitor is blond and braided. She favors pink, and likes to dance. She turned five last week and is sorry that I missed her party. "It was a princess party," she tells me in conspiratorial tones. "I don't have kids, "I tell her. She will forget, though and ask me again a few hours later. "But why not?" she asks.

-- The Ice Floe

Six in the morning will come quick and still her voice bangs about in my head, her tears sticking to me like guilt.

"I was so hurt by how she spoke to me," the sixty-five year-old mother said, dabbing the folded and refolded tissue to her reddened eyes, her long hair disappearing way beneath the edge of the table. "Why does she do that?"

-- Adriana Bliss