Motherhood: “To My Daughter”

“In the glances of mothers is the bliss of life,
and in the tones of their voices the anthems of immortality.”

*

This essay, from the book “Women,” is perhaps the summit of Salma Sayegh's art: in it there is transcendence, and in it a breath from the greatest Wellspring.

How sweet you were when you crawled and when you grew — nay, before you were born! When you first took form near my heart and stirred in my soul a revolution that in one moment overturned my being, and changed me from a carefree, flighty child into a creature laden with tenderness and love; and when you leapt into life with your two rosy hands and your silvered eyes, ignorant of the meaning of life and existence.

And when they brought you to me, and I took you to my breast and stayed my whole night contemplating you by the faint oil light — gazing at your eyes, your brow, your jaw, your nose, your cheeks, and every limb of you, so exquisitely fine and soft — saying to myself, “She is mine! She is mine!!”

And when I gave you my heart's melted substance to drink, and watched you grow day by day on what you drew from the water of my life. How I delighted in those long hours, and poured out my soul before the temple of your love, wishing I could give you all the blood in my heart, all the strength in my soul, all the life in my being.

And when you were weaned and wept for my breast, and touched the first of life's sorrows. How sweet you are, in every time and season.

How sweet you are!

*

How beautiful you are in the water — you are like the dolls and the statues, and you show me humanity in its pure stages, before the worm of disease and the moth of corruption have gnawed it! How often I stood in reverence before your adored statue. How often my gaze wandered between the roundness of your arms, the plumpness of your shoulders, and the folds of your neck.

And how often my thought pierced the beautiful envelope and penetrated far within. I pictured your lungs, and your small heart driving the blood through your body, giving you life by the order of the supreme Creator.

And I pictured your reasoning powers taking shape and growing little by little, out of the inherited experience found within them and the influences of the surroundings ever added to them.

How I wished I could remove all that I bequeathed you — despite myself — of faults and defects; and how I wished I could give you all that I long for of goodness, righteousness, and a higher perfection!!

*

How eloquent you are today: you take things in, you understand; you respond, and you recount.

When you study the lines of my face and gaze into the depths of my eyes, and every stirring of my soul is reflected on your tender face — your eyes gleam with happiness, or darken with despair, or laugh for joy, or weep for misery!

And when you bind my neck with your arm and ask me: Mother, why are you thin and pale? Why do you not smile? Mother — tired, because you work? Then your body quivers, your heart flutters, your lips tremble, and your tears flow.

Ah, how my soul kneels at your feet, imploring you to cease weeping.

And how I wish I could enter your tender memory and erase from it the pictures of misery, and set in their place pictures of happiness.

How my tears come racing — tenderness for your tenderness, love for your love — and I clasp you to me, reckoning that I clasp the treasures of the earth and the riches of all creation.

How much of my spirit I have poured into your spirit! I gave you until I had kept nothing for myself; then I came back to you — and behold, you are a spring that knows no drought, giving to me and giving without measure.

From your eyes springs a magic power that is my provision morning and evening. When the strength for struggle fails in me, I look into your eyes; when the days set their terrible barriers before me — into your eyes.

From your eyes come my will, my strength, my existence, my renewal, the reason of my endurance, and the secret of my life.