Love her as in childhood Through feeble, old and grey. For you’ll never miss a mother’s love Till she’s buried beneath the clay.

My mother's face floated to mind, a pale, reproachful moon, at her last and first visit to the asylum since my twentieth birthday. A daughter in an asylum! I had done that to her. Still, she had obviously decided to forgive me.

Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

Fatherhood is the best thing I ever did. It changes your perspective. You can write a book, you can make a movie, you can paint a painting, but having kids is really the most extraordinary thing I have taken on.

I realized if I didn't start talking to my relatives, asking questions, thinking back to my own beginnings, there would come a time when those people wouldn't be around to help me look back and remember.

My grandmothers are full of memories, smelling of soap and onions and wet clay, with veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say, my grandmothers were strong.