爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
但是时不时地，她也会想起那个危急的时刻，那一刻，身为母亲的爱让一切变得不同。 In springtime, when our first lambs arrive, I go out to the sheep-pen to watch the ewes, see them nursing their young, tenderly, contentedly; licking the wet coats, bleating reassuringly. And I say to myself, how basic the maternal instinct is. Being a mother is easy; all you have to do is follow your nature. No call for careful planning, balanced judgements, knife-edge decisions, like everywhere else in life. Before long, however, motherhood takes on another aspect: When your treasure turns her innocent gaze upon you and says ‘no’; spits out the nourishing good food you have prepared for her, stamps her little foot and announces that she hates you. If you were a sheep, this is when you’d decide that time has come for weaning; turn your back on the offspring and enjoy chewing your grass in peace, without someone tugging at your udder. We, of course, can’t do that. Our children need us and will continue to do so, long after the maternal bond starts to give. To love them just as much can be a challenge. But this is where we start to learn from our young: lessons of patience, empathy and forbearance.
Being a mother is no longer easy. But it does bring its own rewards. Once I found myself in an air emergency. Before attempting to crash-land, we had to spend an hour circling to burn up excess fuel. It was a very long hour. The stranger in the seat next to me held my hand and told me his whole life was passing before him. My own mind was following a more morbid course, picturing my funeral, pondering whether there would be enough left of me to put in a coffin. Then another image broke through, the agonising thought my unconscious had been fighting to suppress: the toddler I had left behind, the image of him coming into our bedroom in the morning, getting into his mother’s bed to start the day with a cuddle. I saw him entering this room day after day, with a bed that remained empty, where he would never again feel his mother’s arms wrapped around his warm little body.
