Of the roles we play in life, it is the most uncertain. Because we are born children, we become brothers, we are grandchildren, cousins, nephews, someone’s partner, but the enormous responsibility that represents that the creature we want is cared for, nourished, healthy, clean, rested and clothed, and later learning, joy, acknowledgment of limits, naming the world and surrounding it with love and happy surprises takes our lives.
The first time I bathed my eldest daughter, I needed the company of my own mother, in addition to that of my husband, so that, when I held her head and immersed her little body in the water, the warmth, the soap, and the bewilderment hers and mine softened with the balm of cleansing. I thought that she would slip out of her hands like a sardine, that she would plunge into the tub and that she would drive me crazy. As if my own arms couldn’t hold that small weight of my newborn… Now that I am a grandmother, I am amazed to see how my daughters become mothers. Wise, safe mothers, mothers who teach me.
One becomes a mother the instant they place the baby that has lived in your body right next to your face and the exchange of glances happens. “She is a little person. She depends on me. I will feed her, I will take care of her from the cold, I will lull her to sleep, I will watch over her dreams, I will accompany her steps, I will remove the dangers from the road. That vigilant accompaniment and supply, after the moment of fear, gives us power. A height that we do not value until time has passed. Almost the possession of a secret. We don’t value it in our own mothers and fathers until a long time has passed.
Being a mother brought me closer to my own mother in a complicit way, sometimes minimizing her advice, but always requiring her support. Being a grandmother amazed me, but my mother was no longer there to ask her what this new role of mother of her daughter transformed into her mother had been for her. How had she managed to recognize the boundary between grandmother and mother? To respect the decisions of her daughter, that is, me, and not be someone imposing and know-it-all, eager to extend that power that the slow learning of motherhood had conferred on her? Being a grandmother made me look at my own daughter with enormous tenderness.
That feeling that that little girl that I had cared for and protected had this imposing task of watching over the growth of a newborn. When I held that little boy in my arms I felt gratitude: my daughter gave me back with her own motherhood the time in which I became a mother and cradled and was amazed watching my daughters grow.
I realized that being a grandmother I could look at that learning on the fly that had been left far behind and even smile at who I was when I debuted as a mom. I admired those mothers and fathers who work, care for and found a small family that contains us, continues us and always gives us back the infinity of our capacity to love. Children teach us a form of love. Children make us mother and father. magnanimous privilege.
About the author: Columnist of The universal and the tv show passwordsMónica Lavín is also a professor and researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. Her prolific career as a writer encompasses genres such as the novel and the essay. The most recent of hers is last days of my parentspublished by Editorial Planeta.