May 5, 2012
Here are a few quotes from Bed and Board, Chapter 4.
To be a Mother is to be the sacrament - the effective symbol - of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home...in the extended sense that she remains our center of gravity through the years. She is the very diagram of belonging, the where in whose vicinity we are fed and watered, and have our wounds bound up and our noses wiped.
What can be said of mothers is that while they do fulfill their functions, they are increasingly tempted to do so for the wrong reason. They are led, subtly but surely, to look on the mothering they do as mere necessity - even a penance - and live as if they were reserving their real enthusiasm for something else, usually unspecified. They list themselves apologetically as "only a mother"; and they accumulate endless labor-saving devices, in order to conserve themselvs for some other and better role than motherhood.
A mother's role then is precisely to be there for them. Not necessarily over there, but just there - thereness itself, if you will; not necessarily in her place but place itself to them; not necessarily at home but home itself.
Your body is the first object any child of man ever wanted. Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available. Be there for them with a vengeance. Be a gracious, bending woman. Incline your ear, your heart, your hands to them. Be found warm and comfortable, and disposed to affection. Be ready to be done by and to welcome their casual effusions with something better than preoccupation and indifference. It isn't a matter of how much time; only how much intensity. Children love fat mothers. They like them because while any mother is a diagram of place, a picture of home, a fat one is a clearer diagram, a greater sacrament. She is more there. I can think of no better wish to all the slender swans of this present age than to propose them a toast: May your husbands find you as slim as they like; your children should always remember you were fat.
The great truth is that we exist for our functions, not our funcitons for us. I was not put here to get myself happy, but to put myself into my role. It's somebody else's job to look after me. I'm supposed to be too busy with my own work to have time. We don't often do it that way, but that is how we are put together.
Zoe likes the sing-a-long for about 10 seconds- short attention span.
Zoe is throwing a fit and then is delivered!
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| Havilah got me these shoes! |
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| I'm 7 1/2 months old now! |
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