My beautiful son,

I want to share a vivid memory with you, one of those somehow present within me and which can still transport me to my childhood days, many years ( decades!) on.

When I was about 10 years old, 3 years older than your current age, I took a liking to attentively watching my fellow schooler mums, playground, or beach friends. In one of those many moments of infant introspection the thing which struck me the most was not seeing mums wearing their “many hats” or the skillful multitasking; that ability to peel off the skin of an apple while making sandwiches and comforting their child, who in free-reign relentless excitement, just bumped his head against the kitchen wall. I recall being conscious of what I perceived as a “mum thing” from an early age.

The question that resonated in that little head of mine was: How IS a mother in the world? How does a mother navigate BEING a mother in the world?

Surely if all these little humans came through the world through them, they must be different, feel differently. Not feeling “different” in an emotional sense – I would grasp that over the years – but in a purely physical sense.

Do they feel “something” in their own flesh? They must, I used to think. Their children are pieces of their own flesh – not metaphorically but literally – so if they have pieces of their own flesh scattered around and outside of them, flesh and bones who grow, explore, evolve outside of their own, they surely have to feel that “something”, something certainly big, yet opaque and unfathomable for a little girl to perceive.

Do they feel pain in that part that was ripped and where does that flesh come from?  Is it possible to go on with their lives when parts of their own flesh live now outside of them with no control of what that flesh would navigate through? Those cells of their own changing so rapidly with no prior warning.

Is it painful? and if it is indeed so, where do they feel the pain? Are there any band-aids which they need to place where that piece of flesh was torn? And how often do these band-aids need changing?

Being a mother is like having your own heart living outside your body, they say.

When I revisit these questions, I can evoke those childhood moments of utter wonder and that poignant desire to know how mothers can go on with their lives when pieces live outside their own being, their own living flesh. I even recall having being scolded sometimes in those moments where I would sit and make myself those questions, in amazement: “This girl has her head in the clouds, come back here, you are missing the fun”.

My child self is long gone but the amazement and curiosity still remain. And while some questions were answered, others remain open, up in the air.

Is it painful to have a part of your own flesh ripped off you and put out in the outside world?

It is not painful. It is raw, primal, and scary, too. Very scary.

But I’m no longer afraid of the physical pain. It has been fully overwritten by a mesmerizing desire to see and take in that part of my own flesh become their very own flesh and bones and be privileged enough to see it all the way through.

To say that I love you till the infinite and beyond is a complete understatement. And loving you is the only answer I am absolutely and heartfeltly certain of.