Summary

Janet feels slightly upset by the idea of Judith gossiping about family matters to Don. She believes that if she had not had two female children, they would not have developed such a propensity for gossip. She thinks of her own habit of doing so with her neighborhood friend Ruth in Vancouver; that was how Janet and Ruth processed their various problems and anxieties. Janet remembers her father once saying to her that for him, all the years of Janet’s childhood were virtually indistinguishable to him. Janet was internally offended by this, for she has a very clear recollection of those years. However, when she thinks of the years of her daughters’ childhoods, they do seem like a blur to her, similar to her father’s statement. She was a stay-at-home mother, spending much of each day cooking and cleaning and tending to...