I, Mary MacLane/Chapter 30

by Mary MacLane

A life-long lonely word

To-morrow

FLEETING times I wonder if it is my defect or others' that no human family tie holds and warms me.

There is none. I think about it with wistfulness.

The only tie-of-blood feeling that clings to me is of my warming and keeping-alive. And it is very feeble. It grows more feeble.

It is a trivial matter as I look at it universally.

But as I look at it earthlily: there would be an abnormalness, a lostness in one when the mother who bore her got from it at best but a small cool dislike.

It makes me feel humanly lost.

'Lost' is the shuddering life-long lonely word that brushes against me some nights and noons.