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2001-07-03 - 9:38 p.m. Mothers ------- I point out to Azman how I have often observed that mothers do not have just one face but layers of faces. Even if they are happy, there is an underlying note of melancholy, in their most explicit sorrows there are lightning-flashes of anger, and even their pride is often tinged with anxiety. It is as if they are wearing many masks at the same time, but each one made of water: one stratum will replace another, but in a manner impossibly subtle and imperceptible. Azman has an interesting theory as to why this is so. In the past, mothers had many children, each one with their own whims and demands. The mother had to develop a different face for each child: one for the son who keeps bringing home the casualties of his home-made catapult, another for the daughter whose pale calves are like villages pillaged by marauding mosquitoes, another for the youngest one, who shudders in his sleep, tormented by a nightmare of such unerring constancy every Wednesday night, and whose only solace in the world is the texture of his mother's soft earlobes…
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