Reflections on a ninth birthday
My cousin R is turning nine, and to mark the occasion she is getting her ears pierced. So exciting! Of course I bought her some earrings, and I also decided to give her two old pairs of my own, which my mother gave to me when I had my ears pierced at age five. One pair actually belonged to my mother originally, when she got her own ears pierced at sixteen; the other pair was purchased for me. They are small, very appropriate for a little girl, and they shined up nicely. I packed them in with the earrings I'd bought for R, and mailed them today with a card in which I wrote her a note explaining the earrings' provenance.
It sounds so banal when I put it on view like this -- three generations of women, hanging pieces of metal from their ears, sniff sniff -- but I really did feel kind of weepy. I felt something about loving a child -- the feeling of loving someone more than she could ever possibly love you, beyond reason, and being content with that.
Sometimes in mediation people ask me whether I have children. I do not have children. I do not know what it's like to be a parent. But I know something of what it's like to love a child.
It sounds so banal when I put it on view like this -- three generations of women, hanging pieces of metal from their ears, sniff sniff -- but I really did feel kind of weepy. I felt something about loving a child -- the feeling of loving someone more than she could ever possibly love you, beyond reason, and being content with that.
Sometimes in mediation people ask me whether I have children. I do not have children. I do not know what it's like to be a parent. But I know something of what it's like to love a child.