I’ve been thinking about Tillie Olsen this week. So many of her stories move me, make me ache with truth and motherhood and disparity. When she died in 2007 Peanut was just over a year old and while I admired Olsen’s work, I didn’t really feel her as I do now.

Today I flipped through Tell Me A Riddle looking for a quote I vaguely remember, that I absolutely don’t deserve to use as a chapter epigraph, but that I wanted to revisit.

And I remembered I Stand Here Ironing.

Do you know it?

Read it. Tell me if it sears your very being.