Motherhood

O breeze within my being, O lyre whose strings are my heart, O bud whose fragrance is my soul...
O my beloved—!

You take shape within my depths, and my heart feels you and beats with love of you before my eye has seen you or my hand touched you — there where the threads of life and love and hope were woven for you. O my little bud — your growth is completed, and you are parted from me by the law of nature and creation; you come forth into existence, and everything is strange to your pure eyes, so the merest trifle makes you laugh and makes you cry. Perhaps the breeze that plays with the silken locks of your hair and your soft, tender face makes you cry, and the chirping of a sparrow or the crawling of a bee makes you laugh. How pure you are, my angel!

What happiness is mine when I hear your cooing, which is the song of my hope in life! Your crying and your laughing are the echo of the tunes of my lyre, whose strings were woven from my heart; your existence creates in my house a new atmosphere filled with gladness and happiness.

And what joy is mine the first time you toddle upon your two little feet! This is the first stage of your facing the difficulties — and what difficulties they are, my angel! You want to walk, and your two little feet betray you, and you fall to the ground and begin to cry, until I press you to my breast and soothe your pain with my kisses, and your storm subsides. You grow up little by little, my angel, and one day you come to me angry and weeping because the teacher has scolded you, hoping that I will press you to my breast as though you were a nursling — but you find the contrary: you find from me only reproof upon your reproof and punishment upon your punishment. Two forces contend, my beloved: the force of forgiveness and the force of reproof. And these two forces are nothing but the impulse of love and sacrifice. Perhaps you will bear a grudge against me, but you will understand everything on the day your own heart throbs with that feeling.

When you grow up, I want to see the fruit of what my hand has planted. I want to see your name like a banner of victory, ringed round with esteem and admiration. I want you a deputy, or a minister, or a judge — it makes no difference to me — and if one day you are raised to office, I do not want you to glory and boast in your post: let the post glory and boast in you. And if one day you are a judge, be that just judge, and give judgment according to desert, even against the person nearest to you. Let truthfulness be your motto. Beware of bribery; be no slave to money, for the slave of money is cast off by God and despised even by himself — there is no good in him. Be a brother and a helping arm to the poor, the orphan, and the weak; then the Lord will bless you, and my heart will rejoice at it.

And if you go far away from me, my heart will keep beating with love of you as though you were still in the womb; the ether will carry to me the reach of your joys and gladden me, and your weeping, and make me weep. You will keep pulsing in my being, O bud whose fragrance is my soul.

O being of my being,
O my beloved!