To be a Mother.............

I know this is kind of long reading, but it is good reading!

"To be a Mother is to be the sacrament--the effective symbol--of place.  Mothers do not make homes, they are our home; in the simple sense that we begin our days by a long sojourn within the body of a woman; in the extended sense that she remains our center of gravity through the years.  She is the very diagram of belonging, the where in whose vicinity we are fed and watered, and have our wounds bound up and our noses wiped.  She is geography incarnate, with her breasts and her womb, her relative immobility, and her hands reaching up to us the fruitfulness of the earth......................" 

"..........You are not only a link with something.  You are the thing itself; and you are the sacrament, the instrument, by which we learn to love the things that are.  Your body is the first object any child of a man ever wanted.  Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available.  Be there for them with a vengeance.  Be a gracious, bending woman.  Incline you ear, your heart, your hands to them.  Be found warm and comfortable, and disposed to affection.  Be ready to be done by and to welcome their casual effusions with something better than preoccupation and indifference.  It isn't a matter of how much time; only how much intensity....................."

R.F.Capon

Bed and Board