sent: "I put the iron down"(Olsen 585); "Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him"; "She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not happen today"(Olsen 589).

With the narrator, we construct an image of the mother's own development. Her difficulties as a young mother alone with her daughter and barely surviving during the early years of the depression. Her painful months of enforced separation from her daughter; her gradual and partial relaxation in response to a new husband and a new family as more children follow. Her increasingly complex anxieties about her first child. And finally her sense of family equilibrium which surrounds but does not quite encompass the early memories of herself and Emily in the grips of survival needs. We also construct an image of the stressful growth of the daughter from infancy through a troubled, lonely

Some common words found in the essay are:
Tillie Olsen, tillie olsen, stand ironing, construct image,
Approximate Word count = 649
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)