Being fed.

My mum did something very sweet the other time. She fed me. I really wasn't even paying attention since I was feeling sick. But suddenly, almost as if it was a closeup shot, I pored into my mother's face and saw how I must first have looked when she fed me as a baby, a toddler then probably a messy overgrown toddler. You know the feeling was indescribable. My friends who became mothers told me how it felt like to feed a child and feel maternal, but this very minute I had the fortune of experiencing it again as the baby, reliving the whole experience. And it felt very safe, Very very safe. Why safe?

Because when we were little babies in cots and crying till the cows came home, we didn't know how to express our rage or hunger. We just wailed and wailed. And when nobody came to our rescue, we felt scared and wailed louder. When mum comes with her cajoling arms and tries to make us smile with her little tricks and squeaky voices, instantly we felt safe. Truthfully, every mother is an actress. She has to do so many impersonations and get into multiple characters just to eke a tiny smile out of her little one. Mothers are amazing characters, so awfully amazing that I cannot understand how mothers can be mothers when physically the process of being pregnant with a child is so long and painful and another long and painful process of delivery. And another long and painful process of watching the child grow up.

That kind of maternal love is sort of different from the romantic love you get from being fed. When mum fed me I felt so small all over again. I just shrank into the sublime awe of her parental stature, it was so close, and perhaps because I like absorbing moments like a vacumn, I felt like I was an over the top soaked sponge.

The she uttered those magical words

"You'll be alright."

Pearl S. Buck

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same; and most mothers kiss and scold together.