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Cedar Hawk Songmaker
Cedar’s birth mother, Mary Potts Almost Senior, or “Sweetie,” as she is known to her family, is an indigenous woman reaching the late stages of her middle age. While she struggled with drug and sex addictions as a young woman, which caused her to give up Cedar as a baby, she has since recovered and is able to live a relatively healthy, stable life on the reservation where she lives with her mother, Mary Potts the Very Senior, and her daughter, Little Mary. In spite of the improvements to her own life, Sweetie deeply regrets having given up Cedar for adoption, and struggles to justify this choice to Cedar when she comes to visit. However, Erdrich doesn’t paint Sweetie as the most competent of mothers; while she insists that her younger daughter, Little Mary, doesn’t “fuck or do drugs,” Cedar immediately notices that her younger sister is under the influence of drugs when they meet, and the young girl’s room is littered with racy lingerie. Mary Potts Almost Senior is characterized as well-intentioned but a little delusional when it comes to parenting, and, more generally, as an older woman reckoning with the poor choices of her youth as she approaches old age.
Mary Potts Almost Senior (“Sweetie”) Quotes in Future Home of the Living God
The Future Home of the Living God quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Potts Almost Senior (“Sweetie”) or refer to Mary Potts Almost Senior (“Sweetie”). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Future Home of the Living God
Quotes
I ignore the awful prickling in my throat, the reaction to the second time she said nobody.
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“Just looking at Little Mary I can tell what a good mother you would be.”
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From the picture window of the house, I can see them in the driveway, all together now, gesturing and talking, a phantasmagoria of parents […] I am at the center of some sort of vortex. I go dizzy.
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I look down. At my feet there is a box of black Hefty steel sacks, no doubt placed there by Sweetie as a subtle hint. I bend over, put my pack and computer where I hope I’ll find them again, and pull the first plastic bag from the box.
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Mary Potts Almost Senior (“Sweetie”) Quotes in Future Home of the Living God
The Future Home of the Living God quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Potts Almost Senior (“Sweetie”) or refer to Mary Potts Almost Senior (“Sweetie”). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Future Home of the Living God
Quotes
I ignore the awful prickling in my throat, the reaction to the second time she said nobody.
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Explanation and Analysis:
“Just looking at Little Mary I can tell what a good mother you would be.”
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From the picture window of the house, I can see them in the driveway, all together now, gesturing and talking, a phantasmagoria of parents […] I am at the center of some sort of vortex. I go dizzy.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I look down. At my feet there is a box of black Hefty steel sacks, no doubt placed there by Sweetie as a subtle hint. I bend over, put my pack and computer where I hope I’ll find them again, and pull the first plastic bag from the box.
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