Have you ever born a child?
No
Why not?
I fear it ...
I fear it will ruin my life.
I fear it will bring pain.
and I fear I won't be a good mother.
But it will bring pain
And I'm not ready for it.
Winter Issue 2019
5 years ago
Posts
Even the most prepared is never ready for a title that once you obtain, you have it for life. In giving life to another you then fully understand how it is like living itself. Each day with its own pleasure and pain, but somehow you learn, if you are wise, what a joy life is as you watch your child discover life for the first time and in that moment you see life for the first time as well by becoming a child with them. These are the feelings your poetry evoked in me...
ReplyDeleteLet the love overcome the fear.
I am a man so, so in the short term there is less for me to fear, but I would like to share with you some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteMy Mother has Alzheimer's and I am her live-in carer. At this stage she is very much like a little girl, and I love her very much, she is my mother after all.. I have to get mumsitters in as if she was a child if I want to go out. Every day I make her cups of tea as she watches, while she says things like "I will learn, I will", and I say "yes, you will", in the full knowledge that she is unlearning everything, that she is never growing up, that eventually she will have to be fed with a spoon, that she is growing down, disappearing before my eyes.
I only mean to share with you some of my lack of fear at having a child.
Yes, having a child will certainly bring pain, but there is joy in loving and being loved, and if that joy surpasses that pain in my situation then in yours I am certain your fears will be more than compensated for.
There are other fears, of course. For example - that your child will not be 'normal'. I have worked a great deal on arts projects and in IT Training with Adults with physical impairments and with learning difficulties - as such I can reassure that while there are many difficulties and hardships that a parent of such a child will have to face, hardships that other parents do not - none of your love will be wasted on them, we are all of one spirit, and in my experience these are often some of the finest people I have met - what doesn't kill you does actually make you stronger, intelligence is not wisdom.
Perhaps you fear your child will "go off the rails" - I did not follow a conventional path, it is a great regret of mine that my father did not live to be proud of me - but in retrospect perhaps it was his expectations that were at fault, I do not regret the path I took, I wish he could see where it had led me.
At the age of eighteen I wrote a song called 'Infertile' - about my fears of NOT being able to have a child (I had extremely high fevers as a very young infant, and my balls didn't drop until I was fourteen, so my chances of being able to father a child are very low. I am too scared to be tested for it, though I have had plenty of unprotected sex with long term partners.. and no children yet!)
Finally - of you, Lena, I have only seen a handful of your words, the tip of the iceberg jutting out above the ocean - but I have seen enough to know that you will be a tremendous Mother, both thoughtful and caring. If you were not scared there would be something wrong, you would not be treating the situation with the requisite seriousness and import.
After all these fears I have touched upon - is not the greatest fear of every expectant mother that something will go wrong and her child will not be born at all? I know I have a reputation for being rather too fond of my own stock phrases, but I answer nearly every every question with these words -
"That which you most fear is Love"
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