Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

The book Two or Three Things I Know for Sure by Dorothy Allison is the best book I have read all semester. The reason I enjoy this book so much is because of how easy I can relate to it. Allison touches upon so many depressing, deep, and passionate "stories" from her family growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, such as abuse, lack of beauty, and the power men seem to possess in this part of the US. In one specific chapter, Allison talks about a very strong woman in her life, her mother, and in this story is an underlying example of how women 'really take care of all and run the world.
"At first I didn't understand what my sister was doing, but at the funeral home I began to understand. Wanda was being Mama, doing what Mama would have done, comforting us in the way only Mama knew how to do. Of all the things I imagined, this was the one I had not foreseen. We had become Mama." (Allison 16-17.)
After reading this, I felt very spooked out. While up until this point the book was just something else to read in an enjoyable manner, I realized something. Women from generation to generation pass down their habits and knowledge of taking care of others, so to speak, a main duty women have had for years. It also scared me because I am in that exact situation.
Recently, my grandmother, the only one I had left, unexpectedly passed away from a multiple of diseases. My mom and I moved a month before her passing to Weston, CT to live with family. We now currently live with my elderly grandfather, taking care of him because he too, was recently allowed to leave from the hospital.
Reading this part of the book made me realize that my mother is a firm representation of Allison's sister, Wanda. My mother is her mother, is "Mama," doing things that her mother did for her father and family. She takes care of my grandfather, physically, mentally, and financially as well as taking care of myself. She has become her mother, and because of how my grandmother was raised, my mother learned abilities to nurture others, something women are expected to do. Through this quote and my personal experience, it shows that women are expected to nurture all in any way possible back to health and they keep the world going.