Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the emotional complexities of motherhood, emphasizing the inevitable losses as children grow and change.
Karen Joy Fowler's quote explores the profound experience of motherhood, highlighting that mothers constantly grapple with the idea of loss as their children grow and evolve. Each stage of a child's development is marked by a sense of mourning for the previous version of the child that no longer exists, creating a unique mix of presence and absence. This relationship is imbued with emotions, where mothers engage with both the tangible and the ghostly remnants of who their children once were, acknowledging that these transitions can be painful yet are an intrinsic part of the nurturing process.
In practice
In a speech about parenting, you might reflect on the bittersweet nature of motherhood by quoting this.
There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.
My parents were very poor, but we never felt any sense of need or want. It was a very close, loving, tightly-knit family growing up, and I never felt any sense of deprivation or anything like that.
Whenever I feel mom-guilt, or I feel pressure to be a better mom - to cook salmon on a bed of quinoa for my kids - I just think to myself, 'I... have... suffered... enough.' And then I feel fine about feeding my toddler a bag of chips for dinner.
My professional and personal roots in Alabama are deep and lasting.
Your children live or die without you. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It's a devastating realization, but liberating.
A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.
Fatherhood is not an easy assignment, but it ranks among the most imperative ever given, in time or eternity.
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