I’m not super-comfortable having photos of myself on display, however this shot of me taken 3 weeks after the birth of my first son holds a special place in my heart. He developed severe health problems soon after he was born, spending 2 weeks in intensive care at the Rosie Maternity Hospital in Cambridge. For a while it was touch and go whether he would (a) live or (b) have long-term health consequences. Thankfully, he made a full recovery. This photo was taken a few days after we were released from hospital. You are looking at an incredibly grateful first time mum with her precious bundle in her arms.
Seeing this photo again reminds me how incredibly precious our children are, as well as how commonly things can fall apart between parents and their children. For most of us, the expectation is that our children will love us forever, as fiercely as they did when they were small. But it doesn’t always work out that way. For parents who have lost contact with their children, Mother’s and Father’s Day intensify the pain and sorrow they feel every day.
Over the years since that photo was taken, my attitude to parenting has changed I hope I have learned from mistakes - there were many - and I hope my children can forgive things I have said or done, or not said or done, that have caused them pain or difficulty.
These days, my aim is to love them unconditionally, to expect nothing from them in return, to refrain from judging, and to wish them peace, love and happiness in their lives. To me they will always be the precious beings they were when I first held them in my arms. Their gift to me is the reminder that all life is precious, that life is short and will end too soon, and that life can bring us true joy if we choose to see it.
This often-quoted passage from the novel Island, by Aldous Huxley, is one I come back to again and again when I need to be reminded how to be as a parent and a human.
It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.
Wishing all the mothers, mother-figures, and children of mothers the best this precious life has to offer, 'on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag'.
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