or, perhaps … perhaps just the truth –

My mother tells me I am just biding time. She means it as a push toward not biding time. She wants me to lead a readable life-one that can be read as worthwhile, and successful. My mother is not overly concerned with happiness, its fruitless pursuits or otherwise. As far as she can remember, there was only pain connected to the joy of childbirth. She remembers the pain and wants it to have been worthwhile, for a reasonable life.

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. An American Lyric

Claudia Rankine (2004)