A Quote by Michel Odent
Let us imagine, for example, that a mother is still in such a state of consciousness that she has forgotten the rest of the world while discovering her baby; suddenly somebody appears with two clamps and a pair of scissors in order to cut the cord. This distraction is a dangerous interference with the physiological processes.
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One thing I did have under my belt was, my mother lost her mother when she was 11. She mourned her mother her whole life and made my grandmother seem present even though I never met her. I couldn't imagine how my mom could go on but she did, she took care of us, she worked two jobs and had four children. She was such a good example of how to conduct oneself in a time of grief. When I lost my husband, I tried to model myself as much as I could on her.
She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.
When a baby is born the mother in particular enters into a new larger relationship with the world. She has become connected to all people. She is part of keeping us on earthnot the "us" comprised of individuals but the species itself. By protecting this one baby this gift a mother accepts life's clearest responsibility.
The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive, ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature.
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.
She felt like a fictional character who'd escaped the book in which her creator had carefully and kindly trapped her, taken a pair of scissors to her outline and leaped, free.
I reach for Prim in the twilight, clamp my hand on her leg and pull myself over to her. Her voice remains steady as she croons to Buttercup. "It's all right, baby, it's all right. We'll be OK down there." My mother wraps her arms around us. I allow myself to feel young for a moment and rest my head on her shoulder.
I saw a dead elephant in one of Kenya's natural reserves. Around her were footprints of her baby elephant. This was just so sad, as three days before, perhaps the mother was still taking the baby around to play and to drink water. In her mind, she probably was thinking they had a life of decades to be together. However, the poaching happened so fast and everything collapsed. Without the protection of the mother, the baby elephant is likely to die too. That moment changed me.
Well, when Eleanor Roosevelt's mother dies, she goes to live with her Grandmother Hall. And her Grandmother Hall is in mourning. She's in widow's weeds. She's in her 50s, but appears very old. And she's exhausted from raising rather out-of-control children. Her favorite daughter, Anna, has died (Eleanor's mother), and she has living at home two other sons, Vallie and Eddie. And they are incredible sportsmen, incredible drinkers, out-of-control alcoholics.
If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound.
Every woman, whoever she is, wherever she lives, should be able to give birth without the fear she's going to lose her baby or that her baby will lose her mother.
Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.
Fine,' Aria conceded. 'But *I'll* carry her.' She grabbed the baby seeat from the back. A smell of baby powder wafted up to greet her, bringing a lump in her throat. Her father Byron, and his girlfriend, Meredith, had just had a baby, and she loved Lola with all her heart. If she looked too long at this baby, she might love her just as much.
She looked around herself, disoriented, like she’d forgotten we were at lunch. Like she’d forgotten we were even at school-surprised that we were not alone in some private place. I understood that feeling exactly. It was hard to remember the rest of the world when I was with her.
I like "Rock, Paper, Scissors Two-Thirds." You know. "Rock breaks scissors." "These scissors are bent. They're destroyed. I can't cut stuff. So I lose." "Scissors cuts paper." "These are strips. This is not even paper. It's gonna take me forever to put this back together." "Paper covers rock." "Rock is fine. No structural damage to rock. Rock can break through paper at any point. Just say the word. Paper sucks." There should be "Rock, Dynamite with a Cutable Wick, Scissors."
My mom. She was quite a character. Open-minded. It was a very small town, and she started her own business, manufacturing children's wear. She was very dynamic. Her death was like the umbilical cord being cut. That's when I moved to America.
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