I just finished reading this book by Cheryl Strayed: Tiny beautiful things: advice on love and life from Dear Sugar, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is a memoir which is cleverly disguised in series of online advice columns that she wrote for the Rumpus. Though I am not a fan of advice columns, or memoirs, I appreciated Cheryl’s skillful blending of the two genres. Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book. Of course, I was most interesting in her perspective on parenthood.
On Being Raised by a single mother: Advice to a single mother who is struggling.
“As a single mother—and by that I mean truly a mother alone like you, Oh Mama, one does not share custody or co-parent—she had to be her best self more often than it’s reasonable for any human to be. And you know what’s never endingly beautiful to me? She was. She was imperfect. She made mistakes. But she was her best self more often than it’s reasonable for any human to be.
And that is the gift of my life.”
On having expectations as a parent: Advise to a man who had lost his son in a tragic accident.
“Letting go of expectations when it comes to one’s children is close to impossible. The entire premise of our love for them has to do with creating, fostering, and nurturing people who will outlive us. To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become.
On deciding to become pregnant in her mid-30’s :
“I decided to become pregnant when I did because I was nearing the final years of my fertility and because my desire to do this thing everyone said was so profound was just barely stronger than my doubts about it were.”
“If a magic baby fairy had come to me when I was childless and thirty four and promised to grant me another ten years of fertility so I could live a while longer in the serene, feline-focused, fabulously unfettered life I had, I’d have taken it in a flash.”
On the path not taken:
I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.