In an email dated 22/12/99 from Ruth Lingen to Diedre Lawrence [the curator of the Artists' Book Collection at the Brooklyn Musrum]: Artist statement. This book came out of a collabortive working relationship between Lois Lane and myself. We decided one night (while having a slumber party) to make a book which used our working lives to create something about personal life. We called it our 'girl' book, and we wanted it to be gorgeous. First titled Household Words, the book began to take form as a series of images paired with words we felt were charged with emotion. Lois made many collages over a year and a half, and became it's own story. We hoped the images would be evocative; perhaps as an adult remembers her childhood expectations of her own life, or as a mirror on our own adult expectations of ourselves or other. The title was changed with the inclusion of a mournful trad(it)ional song of the same title, a song finally about longing for what we not have.

Including a fax containing a list describing what goes into each page.