Expecting Adam – Martha Beck

This was my first tentative, wary encounter with one of the greatest gifts I would receive from Adam: the understanding that the word mother is more powerful when it is used as a verb than as a noun. Mothering has little to do with biological reproduction—as another friend once told me, there are women who bear and raise children without ever mothering them, and there are people (both male and female) who mother all their lives without ever giving birth. The bad news is that not all of us have the good fortune to be born to our real mothers, or to stay with them as long as we need them. The good news is that, while mothers are often in short supply, mothering is not. Against all odds, despite everything that works against it on this unpleasant, uncomfortable planet, mothering is here in abundance.

Of course, I wanted very much for John’s family to like me, and he was very anxious for me to make the right impression, so sometimes I’d try to participate in the Polite Conversation. It didn’t come naturally to me, but I’d do my best to pitch in with a comment or two. It would go something like this:

Faye: Well, I guess I’ll go over to Jolyn’s tomorrow and get my hair done.

Jay: Jolyn? I thought that woman Bernice did your hair.

Faye: No, she moved. Now I go to Jolyn.

Jay: Huh! Jolyn’s!

Faye: I didn’t like Bernice much anyway. She made my hair look terrible.

Everyone Except Martha: Chuckle chuckle chuckle

John: So, you’ll be going over to Jolyn’s. Does she do a good job?

Faye: Oh, a pretty good job. I like the way she combs it out.

Jay: Huh! Well, it looks good.

John: Yeah, Mom, it looks great.

Faye: Yes, Jolyn does a pretty good job.

Martha: You know, humans are the only species of primate that don’t do much mutual grooming. I think that’s why women talk so much to their hairdressers. Being groomed sort of triggers the old social-bonding instinct. Don’t you think that’s likely?

At this, all the Becks would stare at me in mute, unanimous horror for about thirty seconds, after which they would begin to talk about planes. Later, when we had retired to the guest bedroom, John would throw a minor fit because I had been so rude, and I would try to hit him with the cardboard tube from a festive roll of holiday gift wrap, and we would go to sleep in icy silence.

The voice was very clear. It didn’t come through my ears; it simply appeared inside my mind like dew appearing on flowers at dawn. You couldn’t say exactly where it came from, but there it was.

Don’t be afraid.

Those were the only words. But words were just a tiny fraction of the message. From the warmth of the voice, from its incredible gentleness, I knew that “Don’t be afraid” was not a commandment to be brave, not a dismissal of my fear, not a testament to the power of positive thinking. It simply meant that there was nothing to fear in the first place. It meant that I was safe. That it would never let anything hurt me.

I appreciated her honesty. At times like that, when you are stripped down to an intolerable reality, glib reassurances stink of falsehood.

Whoever said love is blind was dead wrong. Love is the only thing on this earth that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.

He had no idea where he was going; he just wanted to move away from where he was. It seemed advisable to continue walking until he either felt better or fell over dead.

It reminds me that we are born innocent but ignorant, and that to remedy the second of these conditions we inevitably surrender the first.

I told myself to calm down. It was only a Braxton Hicks contraction, I thought. A Braxton Hicks contraction is a sort of practice tightening of the uterus that occurs during the last weeks of pregnancy. These contractions are similar to actual labor but much less intense. They are called Braxton Hicks because they were “discovered” by a physician named, yes, Braxton Hicks. (What this actually means is that in the nineteenth century a man finally thought to attach his name to something that approximately 50 percent of the human race had been experiencing since the beginning of time. And you men wonder why we get so testy when we’re pregnant.)

That’s how everything went when we were expecting Adam: either bizarrely badly, or bizarrely well. Those puppeteers turned the whole damn world upside down. You might say that I am putting too much stock in the workings of spirit, in the will of God. You might say that John and I were simply discovering the goodwill that had lain, all along, in the hearts of some decent human beings. But you would be assuming that these two things are different, and that is an assumption I reject. I have been blessed with love both human and divine, and I believe that there is no essential difference between them. Any person who acts out of love is acting for God. There is no way to repay such acts, except perhaps to pass them on to others.

and more from another reader on goodreads...

"...you'll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been hurt by remaining closed."

"...then I understood. She was talking about the soothing, singsong language mothers speak spontaneously when they talk to babies. Baby talk is found in all nations, all cultures; it is the original Mother Tongue. It translates across any language barrier because it is more about music than about words; the sounds themselves, not their meaning, give comfort and support."

"When he got home, the sun came out."

"Real magic doesn't come from achieving the perfect appearance, from being Cinderella at the ball with both glass slippers and a killer hairstyle. The real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond the ordinary life, but within it."

(about sweetness felt):
"It comes from looking at the heart of things, from stopping to smell not only the roses but the bushes as well. It is a quality of attention to ordinary life that is loving and intimate it is almost worship."

"Angels come in many shapes and sizes, and most of them are not invisible."

"...despite all my years of education and training, I have learned most of what I know about living joyfully from one person, and he is not on any faculty. They barely let him into the first grade... people pay me good money to pass along to them what Adam teaches me for free. Luckily, I'm pretty sure he will never demand a percentage of the take. It scares me to think how much I owe him."

"Horses live to run; that's what they do... what do we live to do, the way a horse lives to run?... This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run."

"The meaning of life is not what happens to people... the meaning of life is what happens BETWEEN people."

"Life would be completely unbearable if it weren't so hilarious."

"...I have never met a mother of any culture who could just whack off her children's hair without a few nittersweet twinges. It's so astonishing to look at a child, an incredibly complex, independent living being, and know that it emerged from your own insides. It seems a pity to throw any of it away."

"I am always perversely happy to hear that a friend has been knocked upside the head by some unpleasant event. I am not glad they've experienced the pain, but I am profoundly grateful for the down-to-earth compassion that emerges only when people face their pain and absorb it into the fabric of their lives."

"...I decided to try an experiment: for that one evening, I would resist assigning any labels to my classmates... I would try to look at them without preconception... of course, this is nearly impossible, but I did make an effort - for a few minutes. After that I had to stop, because I was so overcome by the beauty of every person... that my eyes kept filling with tears. I think that's maybe one reason we screen out so much loveliness. If we saw people as they really are, the beauty would overwhelm us."