Beside me on the bus my mother fumes in her old muskrat coat with her hair standing up like angry black flames around the red toque. I have forced her to go. What intoxication to find I can assert and insist now, as if absence had turned into authority! She argued, she pleaded, she made excuses. She said she had a headache, a stomachache. Her feet hurt. Next week would be better. Ah, the sharp salty pleasure of forcing someone to do something you consider good for her. I am mothering my mother with all the harsh efficiency she has often used on me.

from Braided Lives, by Marge Piercy