I am fascinated, and continue to find other writers who are fascinated, with the Russian doll aspect of life. With trying to get our minds around the fact that we are the same person who climbed out of a crib in the dark, who sat on one side of a see-saw at Spring Street School, who was pregnant four times.

And yet the Russian dolls make it seem easier than it is: they all look alike.  However, they do make clear the layering aspect of life that Georgia Heard was writing about. We are adding on as we go.

In Arlington Park, Rachel Cusk writes (about Solly) “She couldn’t locate a continuous sense of herself. It seemed to lie all around her in pieces, like the casings of Dora’s Russian doll when all the babies were out.”

In An Accidental Light, Elizabeth Diamond writes, “I am all ages rolled into one. I’m newborn. I’m just learning to walk. I’m the age I was when my mother died. I’m an angry mixed-up teen-ager, a selfish young man…I’m even an old man waiting to die, swallowing pills every day and listening to the ticking of his heart.”