Cycles of Motherhood

“Why was it that so many women artists who had renounced having children could then paint nothing but mothers and children?” ~ Erica Jong

I’m sitting in IHOP feeding Baby A and talking to her the way that you talk to babies. ” More fries? Ketchup? Dip. Dip. Like this. See?”

Behind me is is a man with his elderly mother who has strolled in with her walker and their conversation goes like this, “Do you know what you want to order? Are you cold? Do you want your jacket?…Mom, you must be cold. Please wear your jacket.”

I am struck by the way this man cares for his mother . Will I be that mother some day?

On BBC’s Planet Earth, I am struck by how a mother whale will feed her baby 500 liters of milk a day, simply surviving off her fat reserves, and starving while swimming on a long ocean journey with her baby. How the mother gently nudges her newborn baby to the surface off the ocean as if telling the baby, Breathe Baby. Breathe.

I am always impressed by the work mothers do, by the sacrifices they make, and by the little tasks that they do automatically, picking up squished grapes from a floor, carefully watching baby faces swell from too many grapes stuffed in cheeks making sure baby chews, wiping sticky mouths, flattening flyaway hairs on a daughter, and so much more.

Quran Ayah on how elderly people revert to acting young:

 And he to whom We grant long life We reverse in creation; so will they not understand? (Quran 36:68).