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My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

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Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up

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but it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst. So how do you tell an adult that maybe everythin...more

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I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I on...more

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Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

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I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up—as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I onc...more

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But kids don't stay where they're supposed to. You turn around and find her not in the bedroom but hiding in a closet; you turn around and see she's n...more

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I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children.

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Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

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At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone...more