A Mother's Love

A mother’s love is both a source of pain and joy.
She cannot dissemble her own essential qualities. Yet she
is constantly haunted by the specter of their affect on her
impressionable child

She feels erroneously that the greatness or inadequacy of
her own spirit can be measured by the person he becomes;
Her own sorrows, delights and anxieties will be visibly
reflected by his ability to contend with inevitable
difficulties

She has no control over the forces other people are
constantly unleashing on his unformed character and
consequently is continually troubled by their power to
inflict lasting damage. She becomes the vulnerable captive
of her own tenderness

She does not realise that while certain elements in her own
nature: standards, beliefs, the direction she asks him to
take, may filter through, they will eventually comprise a
minute component of the complete cycle

He is the creation of life’s own desire to perpetuate itself in
its tragic imperfections and glorious potential. The extent
of his resilience was decided before his birth
Should he err, her remorse will exceed his. Should he be
punished unjustly, she will serve a harsher sentence. Yet
when his unconquerable spirit derives benefits in the shape
of firm reality she cannot demand the credit

She can only stand in the shadows and bless the benign fate
that chose her to bear one of its more fruitful products. She
sowed seeds of love and is reaping a golden harvest but she
would have been powerless if the cyclone had crushed them
in its wake

Now she prays on that he enjoys the life that created him
and can view dispassionately all the elements of her own
nature with love and understanding.
This was me...   

Carmelita Naomi Roemer