“I love how Dungy presents the new mothers through two primary metaphors: they are like animals, and they are like houses opened forever to the world. Dungy keeps teasing these metaphors through repetitions and subtle shifts until they collide—those opened houses can no longer keep the natural world out; the mothers can no longer maintain the illusion that they are separate from the natural world. They’re part of nature—which also means aging and death, those unavoidable natural processes—are ahead of them, represented by that image of winter approaching a house emptied and thrown open to the elements.”
Listen and read here.