The Book

"Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemd to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequte materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbabilty could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone."
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

I'm reading The Grapes of Wrath for about the 232nd time. It's a story with which I deeply identify; my grandparents were children of that era, only they couldn't even gather up the meager sum -- of money or want-to -- necessary to go West. Maybe my great-grandparents knew better; maybe they knew what the Joads found out when they got there, that the Bad would be there, too, in the promised land, just a different kind of Bad. So they stayed in Texas, for a while, with wet bedsheets covering the windows to keep out the dust, and when they finally went in search of A Better Life they wound up in Missouri. Go figure.

The above passage is incredibly striking to me. That, to me, is what a mother does. It's the way my grandmother raised her eight children; it's the way my mother did it, for as long as she could, and in her way, it's the way my wife is raising our family. It's a beautiful job, and incredibly important, and I suspect in our society it's always been underrated.

And then there's me. Perhaps, I figure, I could just type Steinbeck's words until my fingers were trained to assemble words in similar combinations. Think there's any chance of that?