Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the emotional complexities of motherhood, emphasizing the inevitable losses as children grow and change.
Karen Joy Fowler's quote explores the profound experience of motherhood, highlighting that mothers constantly grapple with the idea of loss as their children grow and evolve. Each stage of a child's development is marked by a sense of mourning for the previous version of the child that no longer exists, creating a unique mix of presence and absence. This relationship is imbued with emotions, where mothers engage with both the tangible and the ghostly remnants of who their children once were, acknowledging that these transitions can be painful yet are an intrinsic part of the nurturing process.
In practice
In a speech about parenting, you might reflect on the bittersweet nature of motherhood by quoting this.
There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.
I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.
Paradoxically, those who call for family values also tout the wonders of an unregulated market without observing the subtle cultural links between the family they seek to regulate and the market they hold free.
There is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.
My father was the quintessential husband and dad.
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