He stretched his arms out. They remained empty.

For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, 'This is what I have made of it! This!'

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

She smiled at her tears.

Virginia Woolf in her mother's dress in Vogue, 1926

For we think back through our mothers if we are women.

Virginia Woolf